Whitework Embroidered Muslin Gown with Long Train, French, c. 1800

From Kerry Taylor Auctions

Santuario Madonna di san Luca. Bologna. October.

Teapot and Yellow Jug - Sian Hopkinson

British , b. 1967 -

Oil on board , 10 x 10 in. 25 x 25  cm.

B. Dylan Hollis - #7 - sentence starters

i don't know if accidentally giving your cat a wig when you cuddle them is a plus side or down side of having long hair

« When I think back on the year 1915, it seems to me that I still hear my friends tell me despondently: "I can't think of anything else! I can't read, I can't work, or find useful distractions (...), I only ruminate about our times, incessantly, until I'm nauseated (...). I've just had two hours of liberty—there was a time when I would have offered them to Tolstoy or Pascal. Today I read about [the war], or European colonial methods; issues that are entirely beyond my reach, but how to think of anything else?"

And perhaps we shouldn't strive to think of anything else; the point is not to turn our backs on our times, but to consider them calmly and thoughtfully. (...) It may be that the philosophy which absorbs you leaves no room for indulgence. Perhaps you feel yourself full of bitterness and rancour towards your fellow men, perhaps you have made up your mind to see in their activities nothing but greed and selfishness. (...) Do not be too eager to prove yourself right! Above everything, do not rejoice in being right in so dismal a fashion. (...) My only ambition is to beg the world to look for anything which can lighten the present and future distress of mankind, to find what interests the soul in a life burdened with troubles and disillusionments, to honour more than ever the faithful and imperishable resources of our inner life. (...)

The storm rages on, the events escalate, worsen, never cease. Never have they seemed more complex, more severe, more demanding. More dangerous. Wherever we turn, an opinion holds up its head and vehemently solicits our belief. (...) Our convictions, our certainties, are at each other's throats. (...) Yet mankind, even in these terrible hours, is only seeking happiness. Men have set off to conquer happiness, clutching in their hands the tools which will forever destroy it. (...) The wrong direction the world has taken is so obvious, so cruel, so vast (...)

Regardless, I would suggest not to lose hope—so long as a single wallflower still opens, in April, over the ruins of the world. Like algae, like mosses, like these laborious lichens which attach to the very ruins their infinite need for happiness, we will find joy in our present affliction and we will grow it, like a wind-battered plant in the parched soil of a wilted world. »

— Georges Duhamel, La Possession du monde (translation mine) Written in 1917 as he worked as an army surgeon.

I can't be bothered to put in the links just now but according to Wiktionary,

BEHOLD A HELLBEAST

@beautifulterriblequeen this made me laugh so hard that i got over my anxiety about peer reviewing tags

Ok but tortoises are bad tempered little assholes and I love them. Clive once spent an hour trying to kill my brother from any direction he could ram him while he was lying on the grass. Settled on his throat as the best bet. The fact he is the size of a side plate does not deter his murderous ambition.

“A Helping Hand”

out thrifitng, I hear a mom hiss “aiden. do not.” then a short pause followed by fervent bongo playing

The best shot of the year

Those in the notes worried about this being AI, it's not - her name is Pan Xiaoting and she's a badass billiards pro

the spirit is willing but the flesh is experiencing technical difficulties