directly asking merch makers in their preorder fundraising posts who makes their products & where & if equitable pay can be guaranteed to the ppl actually sewing their shit together .. perhaps a new trend this year

found on etsy

 Giuseppe Biasi (1885-1945)

circa 1925 and 1928

Average bug guide

fearsome fangs friday!!!!!!!!!! bite everyone

Clotilde Olyff’s collected stone alphabet

[“While many of us today take queer individuals at face value and view them as authentic, this has not historically been the case, and plenty of people still insist on viewing us as “phony,” “counterfeit,” and “fake.” This presumed “fakeness” arises directly from straight assumption, and it comes in two general flavors.

The first is delusional fakeness, which occurs when perceivers who are ignorant of, or in denial about, a particular LGBTQIA+ identity conceptualize the individual as an otherwise “normal” person (typically straight, although sometimes gay) who is pretending to be something they are not. Because the individual’s identity, desires, and behaviors are presumed to be “fake,” they are often imagined as engaging in purposeful artifice. For instance, perceivers may presume that the queer individual is merely “seeking out an alternative lifestyle,” putting on an “affectation,” or staging a contrived “performance.” Alternatively, the perceiver may imagine the individual as a victim of “self-deception”: They must be “confused” about their gender or sexuality, or merely going through a “phase.”

Then there’s deceptive fakeness, which often occurs in perceivers who are at least hypothetically aware that LGBTQIA+ people exist but nonetheless discount our potential presence. In such cases, the perceiver initially presumes that the individual in question is straight, as per straight assumption. But when they later learn that the individual is queer in some way, the perceiver will view this new information as a “surprise” or a dramatic “reveal,” one that leads them to consciously reinterpret the individual’s past presentation and actions as merely an “act” or “ruse” intended to “trick” or “deceive” the perceiver into thinking they were straight.

In all likelihood, the queer individual was not purposely hiding that information; rather, their queerness was simply erased by the perceiver’s straight assumption. But you would never know this from the language we tend to use in such situations, in which queer people are often described as “passing,” “closeted,” or “straight-acting.” These phrases give the impression that the queer individual is the sole active party who is single-handedly engaged in purposeful deception, while simultaneously discounting the perceiver’s own active (if unconscious) processes of categorization and straight assumption. Of course, if “deception” is supposedly involved, then there must be some kind of underlying motive. Often the motives attributed to queer people in these cases are fairly banal (“Julia was pretending to be straight in order to avoid discrimination”), but sometimes they can be quite nefarious, as we will soon see.

The two types of queer “fakeness” that I have just described are not mutually exclusive—for instance, one can believe that a “deceptive” queer person is also “delusional” about their identity. Furthermore, the rationales that people propose to explain our supposed “delusions,” and the motives attributed to our supposed “deceptions,” are often illogical and may even contradict one another. After all, their purpose is not to reflect reality but rather to reaffirm that straightness is “natural” and “real.” Indeed, queer “fakeness” and straight “realness” are intrinsically linked: Straight individuals are presumed to be “natural” and “authentic” by default, but as soon as anyone begins to question their desires, or colors outside traditional Predator/Prey roles, onlookers will begin to label them as “queer” and perceive them as “fake.”]

julia serano, from sexed up: how society sexualizes us, and how we can fight back, 2022

Known as The Westbury Quilt, this stunning hand embroidered and appliqued red and white quilt was made by 6 women from the Hampson family between 1900-03 in Tasmania, Australia.

It is one of the more important colonial quilts in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, and was featured in their “A Century of Quilts” exhibition in Canberra.

Although technically more of a coverlet, as it is not quilted, this quilt has 52 stitched blocks – embroidered with proverbs and sayings, and intertwined with blocks depicting favourite farm animals, complete with pet names! It’s a joyful quilt, with its bright red fabric, and funny (laugh out loud at times) sayings, and a big happy embroidered floral border.

It is likely that this quilt was intended as a raffle prize at the time, due to the embroidery on the block above, but the quilt was exhibited by Mary Hampson at the Westbury Agricultural Show in 1904 and again at another in 1906.

that's a duck !

chikorita gets clowned on a lot for its shit stats and a movepool i would be hard-pressed to describe as "extant" but designwise it's really evocative. it begs the kind of questions that make pokemon so magical: what IF a lima bean was a small dog. what IF instead of a head it had like. a weird nub. with an anime face on it. what if it could throw a fistful of razors across the room

A little relaxation, Brooks Falls, Alaska @achdiefranzi

6. BLUNT FORCE

again, not very gory, but at least I found time to do something at all (ง•_•)ง

the thing about magic & its reality is that, as a human being & a magical animal, magic will affect your life regardless of whether or not you take it seriously. pretending otherwise just means that you will be unable to recognize when you are performing or being influenced by magical thought and magical action.

even the attempt to cast away and live your life wholly without magic will in its time become a kind of magical action in and of itself. you can't get away from it; it's just a thing about being human. we are pattern-makers and we create meaning and that is how we have come to be the thing that we are on a biological level

in order to maintain awareness of and agency over the way that magic manifests in your life you have to first accept its reality as a phenomenon. u have to accept that magic will arise, with or without your approval.

the question then becomes not whether or not magic will be in your life -- it will arise anyway -- but instead which kinds of magic you want to cultivate. accepting the reality of magic means you can control the ways that you interact with it.

i think 'stay outraged' and other things of that nature are more of a magical activism goal than a material one. an idea of ritual upset or mourning or fury as an end in itself. which is fine as far as magic goes but should be categorized separately from more material goals

as is, i think, 'refuse to normalize'. ritual and not material... why should injustice not be conceptualized as normal. normal has been unjust for a very long time! i think the idea is to assign abnormality and upset to the various day to day horrors and then have that form the basis for action against them but i don't really think it's as much of a requirement to action as people make it out to be. surprise and shock and outrage are not particularly deep wells of impetus to action in my opinion

to be clear i think this kind of "witnessing" or group-emotional-focus magical action can be a worthy aim on its own and when done well can be very effective at making community, mourning loss, or comforting those with little power. but 1) for this kind of emotional magic to be effective, it usually needs to happen in a more specific way than "all of the time be upset about everything", and 2) i don't think it's useful or practical to, like, put it at the top of your "things to do to help with x" list above the material actions one could take. it's useful to be really aware about what exactly the possible ends of various actions can actually be

i think 'stay outraged' and other things of that nature are more of a magical activism goal than a material one. an idea of ritual upset or mourning or fury as an end in itself. which is fine as far as magic goes but should be categorized separately from more material goals

as is, i think, 'refuse to normalize'. ritual and not material... why should injustice not be conceptualized as normal. normal has been unjust for a very long time! i think the idea is to assign abnormality and upset to the various day to day horrors and then have that form the basis for action against them but i don't really think it's as much of a requirement to action as people make it out to be. surprise and shock and outrage are not particularly deep wells of impetus to action in my opinion