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Head Empty, Heart Full

@thesongandthesilence

Caffeine. Books. Himbos. Revenge.

where is that renaissance painting with those two fellers and a giant fucking random skull on the floor that looks like it was accidentally stretched out in photoshop

THANK YOU

somebody please explain

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iamthecoffeebadger

Someone once told me it’s like that because it was designed to be hung in a stairwell so the skull pops out as you walk past.

…I guess it works but you have to be at a pretty sharp angle

There was a whole trend at one point where artists would include something in their paintings (usually a skull, for whatever reason) that’s super distorted in just the right way so that it looks normal if you hold the painting up to a convex/concave mirror. I have absolutely no idea why. But I think that’s what’s going on here.

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In case anyone’s curious, here’s what it looks like when you walk past it irl:

It does have a 3D effect to it! It’s pretty neat, guess it would be even more impressive to people from the 14th century.

honestly, people just looking at the skull are missing the real deal here

You can read any implied text you see in this thing, even the book, that’s how detailed it is. Look at the painting on those letters!

jesus christ you’re just showing off now, Hans!

HANS OH MY GOD

anyway, the skull apparently had some meaning about the transcendence of death, you can only see it clearly when you can’t see the world clearly and vice versa, but man, I’m all about the detail in this guy’s shit

No, I think you’re missing the real deal here

as an art historian, i think this is the best post on tumblr

I have very strong opinions on this subject, and I'm curious how others feel.

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Hi, public librarian (lower case l, no degree) here, please don't.

We're already, in general, severely underfunded. Shocker, the capitalist hellscape we're stuck isn't great about allocating county budget to such a socialist outlet.

When you write in the margins, that's considered damage, and we just do not have the funding to replace every book we have to weed for damage.

Use sticky notes. Please. Write your margin notes on sticky notes in the book. You can even keep your place that way. But please please please don't write in the books, don't crack the spines, and don't dog ear them. That's just going to force us to weed them, and we can't always replace them.

Hi, capital L Librarian here, if you think your notes enhance other readers' experience of the book 1) you're wrong and 2) no one's going to get to read them anyway because you damaged the book and we had to throw it away.

Good job breaking it, hero.

I waited ages to get a copy of The Bear and the Nightingale out of the library, and someone had written a TON of marginalia in it. It sucked. I kept being taken out of the experience by reading someone else's thoughts, and it was incredibly distracting. Marginalia in your home library? Great! Could be kept by future archivists! Also your property, go for it! Marginalia in shared, publicly funded books? Fuck off.