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^^^ Good for those guys!

We need contemporary events to display public disdain for superstition (including astrology 🤮) and to smack down conspiracy theories.

Apparently The Anti-Superstition Society of Chicago was still around in 1962 to salute astronaut John Glenn.

Superstition Ain't The Way!: The 13th Anniversary Jinx-Jabbing Jamboree And Dinner of The Anti-Superstition Society of Chicago, held on Friday The 13th, 1941.

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When people we know suddenly disappear from the radar, it may be a good idea to make a concerted effort to find out what happened to them.

When Luigi Mangione went dark earlier this year, there was some effort by friends online to reconnect. This is from the New York Times.

When somebody who previously was viewed as a positive and even beneficial member of society suddenly disappears for months with no trace, that calls for something more than just pokes on social media. Perhaps we'll learn more in coming days; but a missing person report should have filed after a couple of weeks.

I'm not saying that everybody who suddenly falls out of sight will become a murderer and ruin their own life. But an abrupt and unexplained disappearance usually signals some sort of problem which deserves timely attention.

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The ability to create fonts is awesome.

I made a font inspired by an old 1940s "Bird Lore" magazine nameplate!

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This is an essay version of the 2024 McLuhan Lecture given by writer Cory Doctorow in Berlin. A vid of his lecture (and more) is included in the link below.

The inventor of the word "enshittification" outlines the process in detail. He describes this era as the "enshittocene". Before you despair, he does offer some remedies.

Pluralistic: My McLuhan lecture on enshittification (30 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

An excerpt...

[T]he capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and woolly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize. The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams. The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality. But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

If you'd like to see the internet de-enshittified, quit using platforms which contribute to the process. Not mentioning names, but they're run by multi-billionaires who could afford to buy entire countries.

While no platform is 100% perfect, Tumblr has been rather resistant to enshittification. Cory Docterow has an account here if you wish to follow him.

@mostlysignssomeportents

The tech oligarchs have turned the internet into a tool for extracting resources from us as if we were one large collective strip mine. Their only goals seem to be the preternatural accumulation of even more wealth and the ability to manipulate those in power. We need to become more aware of our own part in this and put distance between ourselves and the monopolies which we now help to prop up.

If you remember nothing else from this...

DON'T FEED THE OLIGARCHS.

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Recording cultural history.

When the American government set out to erase indigenous culture, one woman set out to save tribal music, traveling far and wide with her cylinder phonograph, trousers, and bow tie. This is her story.

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I was checking out the AQI (Air Quality Index) for places around the world and one had me do a double take.

A monitoring station at Burari Crossing, New Delhi currently has a reading of 1739.

For comparison: Istanbul's AQI is 61, Kyiv's is 57, Nairobi's is 55, Lima's is also 55, Seoul's is 50, London's is 44, NYC's is 40, and Vancouver's is 15.

An AQI of 1739 for 24 hours is the equivalent of smoking 83.61 cigarettes.

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That inscription is Egyptian, not Mesopotamian. 😉

can anyone find me that mesopotamian clay tablet telling you to marry a party girl because she'll bring you joy

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Thanks for introducing me to the term ledger art.

Ledger art and indigenous cultural continuity

Wooden Leg's ledger book, 1879-1881

Ledger art is part of a long tradition of Native people documenting their history on their own terms. Many Plains Native communities started chronicling events pictorially on materials like rocks and buffalo hides. Beginning in the mid-19th century, they used pages of ledger books obtained from settlers.

An example of adaptation and agency, ledger art is deeply embedded in the sociopolitical context of a given time. In the face of mass removal, assimilation efforts, and other genocidal actions taken by the U.S. government, Native communities found ways to continue observing their traditions and cultural practices using what was around them––in this case, repurposing found pages of ledger books when materials like buffalo hides became scarce.

Depicting everything from scenes of warfare to courtship, ledger art books tell readers about the memories, values, and presence of the communities who authored them. The images are drawn with a variety of materials, including colored pencils, crayons, and ink...

Read the full post at newberry.org

Black Horse ledger, 1877-1879

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By coincidence I took a COVID-19 test on Monday. Negative. 👍🏼

Though that means I have mild flu – though getting better.

We should all get the latest COVID booster – before The Orange One and his buddy RFK Jr. ban vaccines.

July 24, 2024 - 9th and Wabash

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Bluesky is absolutely an improvement over Elon Musk's MAGA Twitter/X. But it's still somewhat amorphous and hasn't fully settled upon an identity.

Tumblr could use a few tweaks to lure some of the remaining stubborn holdouts at Twitter/X.

I love twitter users’ continued inability to recognise rent-lowering gunshot posts when they see them

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Having talent is great. Though it helps to have some tips on how to promote it here.

And welcome to refugees making their escapes from the increasingly Nazified Twitter/X of Muskovy.

Some art posting tips for the artists migrating over here, as a Certified Tumblr Artist Veteran™️ who's never stopped posting here in a decade:

1. Don't add links under all of your posts

It means they won't show up in search results or tags, it's better to have the one pinned post with links at the top of your blog or links in your description. Alternatively like I do, you can keep links out of posts when you're just posting your art on its own, then only add them to posts that are specifically calling to visit another site (e.g. you're promoting a Kickstarter)

2. You don't need to use really specific tags like on Instagram, and the first 20 ones you use are the ones that count

I remember a few years back it was passed around that the key to getting attention on Instagram was using alternating niche tags, but now some artists just do it everywhere when it won't really do you any favours here.

The first 20 tags you use are the ones that appear in search results, the best general tags to use are #art and #artists on tumblr then after that use ones more specific to you such as say, #illustration or #digital art (also notice these have spaces between the words as tags mostly do on this website)

3. Keep your posts pretty and clean looking

A lot of users can be particular about what they have on their blog because they're trying to keep it clean and aesthetic looking, if your posts are overall pleasing to the eye including the description I've found people are more likely to reblog your posts. That means avoiding massive paragraphs with needless hashtags in the description, and uploading high-quality photosets of your work that shows off the pretty details of your artworks!

As a general rule if you have a bunch of sketches or similar images they'll do much better as a photo set than posting them all individually, unlike on other social media posts do better with quality over quantity, and your post won't "expire" after like 24 hours - people will keep reblogging a post for years here especially artworks.

4. Submit to blogs

One downside for a new artist posting here is there's no algorithm to show you to random strangers to get a momentum going, and it can be hard starting off from nothing because of this. However, if you search around you'll find that there are quite a few art curation blogs here who will be happy to either reblog your art or take submissions and post your art on your behalf with links back to your blog. Just be sure it's a blog that's actively looking for artists and not a random user that you're pestering to promote your work, they usually indicate in their description that they're accepting submissions.

Some examples: @artistalley @sosuperawesome @littlealienproducts @art @supersonicart

You may even find yourself drawing the attention of the Tumblr staff who run multiple art promotion blogs and often feature artists on the Tumblr Radar (it's a little spotlight section visible both on mobile and desktop that features your post to the whole userbase, and it's very exciting getting an email that you've been selected! :D)

5. Read the tags under your posts

Due to an old habit that the website collectively held onto from the days where replies hadn't been added to posts yet, a lot of people use the tags to basically ramble their thoughts under a post they're reblogging.

What does this have to do with artists? Well a lot of people will think out loud in the tags about your art and you can read them all under your post, I find it really supportive and endearing and it's one of my favourite things about posting here!

6. Customise your blog on desktop

Something that new users who only use Tumblr on mobile might not notice is that your blog actually has its own webpage on desktop outside of the app with the URL "yourusernamehere(dot)tumblr(dot)com"

You can actually customise this page in HTML and there's a lot of premade layouts called "themes" either available for free or buyable in marketplaces - this can be a pretty accessible and cheap alternative to a custom portfolio website if you don't have one!

I hope some of this is useful, good luck with getting your art in front of new eyes! 💫

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Punctuation for Halloween seems to have changed over the decades. Does that mean that Hallowe'en or Hallow-E'en had a different pronunciation?

However you say or write it, use the Newberry Library's postcard sender to convey retro Halloween greetings to people you know. 🎃

Newberry Library's Postcard Sender

Don't be scared

Afraid that you've neglected your friends while preparing for Halloween? Don't worry -- the Newberry has you covered! Just reach out and send them a vintage e-greeting via text or email with our 🖤🧡 Postcard Sender 🧡🖤

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Some guys think Trump is a "macho man" because he plays that song at his disastrous rallies. He's really just a large glob of orange putty whose lies are so big that they would make Joseph Goebbels blush.

Dave Bautista has some eye-opening comments which reveal the true Trump.

EDIT: The excerpt from Jimmy Kimmel was removed by YouTube for copyright reasons. 🙁 But it is still freely available on the vid below. If you wish to go to the Dave Bautista portion, it starts after an introduction at 17:55.

^^^ Forward this to the bros in your life. 😉

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Birds are cool. And while those eyes are red, there's much more blue on those birds. 🙂

Red-Eyed Birds of North America sweatshirt designed by yours truly and available now on my online shop!

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That "blazing star" referred to in the upper broadside was undoubtedly a comet. Interestingly, it seems to be from 1680 or 1681.

It was in autumn of 1682 that Dr. Edmond Halley, still in his 20s, made observations which produced calculations regarding a bright comet which was visible at that time. Halley postulated that this object, now known as Comet Halley, was in an orbit which would bring it into the inner Solar System about once every 76 or so years. Sure enough, that comet returned in 1758. Halley succeed in demystifying comets which had widely been regarded as portents of doom.

There just happens to be a comet which you can now see under the right conditions. It's called Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.

Roughly 40° North latitude (give or take 4°) you may be able to see it in the west starting about 35 minutes after sunset this weekend. You need clear or mostly clear skies, an unobstructed view of the western horizon, and low light pollution. A good place for people in the Chicago area might be one of the more rural parts of DeKalb County.

Venus will be further to the left as you're facing west and will be brighter. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be more fuzzy. How much of the tail you see will depend on how dark your sky is. It helps if your eyes avoid as much lighting as possible. If you must look at your phone, keep it in dark mode. Red light, if you have a choice, is the color that's best for your eyes when doing astronomy.

12° above the horizon is not terribly high, so you'll only get about 10 to 15 minutes of good viewing time before it gets too low to see. So don't delay getting to your observing site.

This is a good general article about Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.

You do not need a telescope for Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Binoculars (especially 7X50 or 10X50) are far better for comets. Though seeing comets without any optics is the best experience.

If you need any more help viewing Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS where you live, contact a planetarium in your area.

Spiritual counsel

Halloween is a busy time of year at the Newberry, spectrally speaking. In addition to Enzio, the ghost who lives in the library's basement, our stacks are also haunted by fictional and historical spirits -- such as the advisors from the grave featured in these late-17th century examples of the "ghost poem" genre.

Readers and audiences in early modern England were used to seeing ghosts, according to scholars Nicholas Fisher and Matt Jenkinson, citing Hamlet's father as just one example of "apparitions appearing on stage and in print to caution or counsel the living, to remind them of their crimes--or to rehearse their own."

The crimes referenced in several of our broadsides involve the Popish Plot, a Reformation-era bit of fake news that resulted in the execution of Catholic martyr Edward Coleman and 21 others. "I have been fent to tell your Tender Youth / A feafonable and Important Truth!" long s'd the anonymous ghost in the 1681 broadside pictured above, warning of a "B-- and O--" seeking to "fright the People, and Alarm the Town." With help from a previous reader, who penned in the identity of the "O--" (not a practice we currently encourage), we can read that as Popish Plot fabulist Titus Oates, who originated the anti-Catholic conspiracy to assassinate King Charles II.

Perhaps you'd prefer a first-hand account of these events? Then check out instructions on speaking to spirits in our 17th-century book of magical charms (the Newberry cannot be held responsible &c &c). Want to see more spooky stuff from our collections? Please visit A Very Newberry Halloween 👻

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A 47° difference.

This time of year the period of daylight is shortened by roughly 3 minutes per day in Chicago.

Source details and larger version.

On the rise: my collection of vintage sun imagery.

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Why does a foreign insurance company with a few floors in the building get to rename a landmark? The Empire State Building has been the Empire State Building since day one. d'oh!

Names of monumental structures should not be changing names. But I'd make an exception for Trump Tower Chicago. Obama Point or Hillary Heights are just two replacement names which come to mind.

Chicago: A One-Sentence Poem

They tried to rename the Sears Tower