So I’m going to highlight something I’m not sure people who like skeletons and curiosities think about often:

the human skeletal remains you see for sale in oddities shops were invariably grave-robbed.

I worked with human remains in an academic research context in the US for more than a decade. One of the first things I tried to teach my students was respect for the remains in our collections, not only because they were people, deserving of dignity in their death, but also because most of the skeletal remains in academic teaching collections were not donated voluntarily. In most cases, we have no idea exactly where they came from or to whom they belonged.

Historically, there has been a huge international trade in human skeletal remains for teaching medical students. The trade reached its peak in the 19th Century and continued for much of the 20th, and while ostensibly the practice was banned in India in 1985, it does still exist illegally. In the US and Europe, most of the remains in teaching collections were sourced from India through bone traders. Bone traders were (are) lower caste people charged with disposing of human remains—often by cremation, but also by interring in graves—but instead of doing so, sold the remains on to medical schools in the US/Europe through the intermediary of anatomical and medical supply companies. These anatomical specimens are the remains of people who were, unknowingly and without consent of their loved ones, denied their humanity in death to satisfy the appetite of the West for anatomical specimens, despite the remains of their own people being considered largely sacrosanct.

Which leads me to my next point: this practice originated under British Colonialism in India. I hope I don’t need to draw this point out, but objectification of these remains by medical students and researchers is a furtherance of the Western colonial project and othering of people of colour. As medical students, we’re trained to divorce ourselves emotionally from the remains we learn from in the name of professionalism. Medicine can often be confronting, and it serves patients and doctors alike to be able to continue working calmly and objectively in the face of those challenges. But in a world where empires and scientific disciplines have been (and continue to be) built on a legacy of scientific racism and dehumanisation, it behooves us to consider exactly how those teaching specimens were acquired—and how they came to be for sale.

Any human skeleton or human bones you see for sale in oddity stores are invariably retired teaching specimens, or were otherwise originally purchased through an anatomical specimen supply company that leveraged bone traders for acquiring their wares. In other words, those remains were grave-robbed, or stolen from funeral pyres and morgues. It is vanishingly unlikely that they are remains of known, ethically-sourced provenance like informed donation. If they were, they would not have been relinquished to the general public to be sold for profit. There would be contractual obligations that dictate how those remains would be managed once they need to be retired from teaching/decommissioned.

Please keep this in mind when you see human remains for sale in oddity shops. Buy plastic or ceramic teaching models instead. Don’t unwittingly continue creating a market for stolen human remains.

Something I will sometimes hear from new viewers of It's a Wonderful Life is a desire to see Potter caught or otherwise punished for his transgressions, an understandable desire for justice. But I view this as almost missing a core element of the film.

That's why there's no comeuppance for Potter, it's because part of the lesson of the film is that ultimately he is not important. He fancies himself the biggest man in town, but has made himself merely a speck in the eye of higher ideals. For all his wealth and influence, he remains ever unable to crush the Baileys; His power is empty and the life he has led has made him small.

There's also no punishment because Potter is his own punishment. George is rewarded for his selflessness and good deeds with friends, family, and community. Potter's selfishness and misdeeds have left him bitter and alone, he has woven his own punishment.

putting just one of these jokes in the tags instead of main reblog is a bold choice but all three?! get peer reviewed about it!

The last time I played Puck, the director was a huge freak about not letting us wear shoes on stage because it would "ruin the look", but we all kept eating shit, and instead of just letting us wear skintone dance shoes or something with grip, motherfucker poured Pepsi on the floor so it'd be sticky and we had to schlorp around. I fucking hate you, David.

Why couldn't this have been a one time I dreamt

Coking the stage (mopping it with diluted soda so it's a little sticky) is a legitimate low-budget tactic for slick floors, but he just poured so much Pepsi on the floors that for about a whole week, it was audible.

Maybe the course of true love would run a little fucking smoother if we didn't have to ford your Pepsi river, DAVID.

I would just quit. Fuck people like that. It's easy to walk away

No it's not. Didn't you read the post? There was dried Pepsi everywhere.

just some of the the changes in design for the Penguin Symbol on old Penguin Paperbacks 

he did a little dance and for this crime he was imprisoned in a bubble

They liked his little dance so much they gave him a spotlight

family album

Trying to inflict psychic damage to a tumblr user is like trying to irradiate a cockroach, like it can be done, but the lethal dose is not safe for humans either

Besides the point, but you could always try physical damage?

You’re right Gomez, bring me the flail

Harvesting my wheat

Hehehehehe

Can I fucking help you?

my senior english teacher told me that any scene with a woman in a cornfield in every piece of literature ever is about her journey to womanhood/pleasuring herself in the field and i just.... believed her

What

What

hate when mummy movies use Imhotep as the big bad. He was an architect. Imagine a mummy movie but the mummy is Frank Llyod Wright. And he was buried at the House On The Rock. Ok nevermind that would be a sick ass movie.

the benoit blanc movies show really beautifully how to write a queer character whose story is not centered around their queerness. it's shown that benoit blanc is gay married (to hugh grant!) it's shown that he participates in queer mediums like musical theater and fashion, but none of those things are ever explicitly remarked on. he doesn't have a big coming out scene because he doesn't need one; and the subtle details about him not speaking to his mother, the way he associates a church with homophobia, allows us to draw conclusions about how his family felt about his queerness without making that the sole conflict in his story. the conflict in benoit blanc's story is not that he exists in the world as a gay person, it's that he's always trying to wrangle a bunch of 30 somethings into not confessing to crimes they didn't commit

rip Mr Collins, you would have loved Patreon

Here are the 2024 vaccine recommendation schedules. They’ve already been wiped from the cdc site. Save them and share widely, especially to your friends with kids.

british terms:

toilet: “the loo’”

bathtub: “the soaker”

shower: “the sprayer”

Never heard anyone call a bath “the soaker” or a shower “the sprayer” in my life

pay attention

The reactionary backlash to media analysis is a natural part of the wider "fascists hate anything intellectual" phenomenon, btw.

Wanting you to ignore the politics of Star Wars comes from the same exact place that wants you to substitute the germ theory of disease with the 'sickness comes from failure to be a good christian and most people who claim to be sick are just faking anyway' myth.

To take a quote from Dan Olson: