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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

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Essentially, a trip home which doesn't go according to plan.

I'm reading the Odyssey right now and I need people to know that it's legit pretty funny

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^^^ Earth seems to be making faces at us. 🤨

That cap is from early Saturday at National Hurricane Center's 7-day outlook. It shows various disturbances which potentially could develop into tropical storms.

The situation in the Atlantic has since changed since that map was imaged and you'll no longer see that peculiar expression.

The North Atlantic basin 2024 hurricane season has been calmer than expected. Speculation is centered on a greater amount of dry Saharan dust being driven over the Atlantic from Africa.

There's a 70% chance of that blob over Yucatán developing into a storm. If it does, it will be called Tropical Storm Helene.

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Where do Republicans find such people?

GOP scrambles to contain Robinson fallout in North Carolina

Just in case there is anybody who still needs proof that Republicans are batshit crazy, North Carolina GOP Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's old social media and porn accounts just gave us a reminder.

Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, a CNN KFile investigation found. Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a “perv.”

Previously we heard about Robinson's almost daily visits to porn shops. A former employee of one of those shops made a music video about Robinson's sexploits.

Tomorrow USA — Mark Robinson Loved Porn, Say Porn-Store Guys

Back to the latest Robinson revelations...

Many of Robinson’s comments were gratuitously sexual and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a pornographic website that includes a message board. The comments were made under the username minisoldr, a moniker Robinson used frequently online. Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades. CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.

Republicans may preach fundamentalist Christian values but what they practice is another matter.

Publicly, Robinson has fiercely argued that people should use bathrooms only that correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth. He’s also said transgender women should be arrested for using women’s restrooms. “If you’re a man on Friday night, and all the sudden Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested, or whatever we gotta do to you,” Robinson said at a campaign rally in February 2024. “We’re going to protect our women.” Yet privately under the username minisoldr on Nude Africa, Robinson graphically described his own sexual arousal as an adult from the memory of secretly “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a 14-year-old. Robinson recounted the story as a memory he said he still fantasized about. “I came to a spot that was a dead end but had two big vent covers over it! It just so happened it overlooked the showers! I sat there for about an hour and watched as several girls came in and showered,” Robinson wrote on Nude Africa.

So essentially, Robinson has confessed to being a creep. And creep is probably the nicest word for his behavior.

“I went peeping again the next morning,” Robinson wrote. “but after that I went back the ladder was locked! So those two times where [sic] the only times I got to do it! Ahhhhh memories!!!!” In other comments on Nude Africa, Robinson discussed his affinity for transgender pornography. “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

The original posted CNN report can be read here. It includes screen pictures and more sordid details. If you prefer video, CNN produced this piece last night which also includes Jake Tapper in conversation with Derrick Johnson of the NAACP.

^^^ Yes, Trump has called Mark Robinson "Martin Luther King on steroids". Though Robinson himself once called Rev. King "Martin Lucifer".

Robinson has TRUMP stamped all over him. Robinson is even using a flaccid Trumpian "fake news!" defense to deny the evidence.

Keep in mind that in addition to being the GOP candidate for governor of a medium large state, Robinson is currently its sitting lieutenant governor.

These revelations are bizarre, disturbing, and hilarious all at the same time.

Andrew Kaczynski of CNN's KFile and his team deserve tons of credit for uncovering this. It's another example of why we need a free and independent news media.

BTW, support Democrat Josh Stein for governor of North Carolina.

Meet Josh | Josh Stein for NC

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Stop anti-Haitian hatred by MAGA Republicans!

^^^ Repost if you oppose far right racist incitement of violence against Haitian Americans by MAGA Trump Republicans.

(art by Printorama7)

Donald Trump has declared war on the Haitian-American community and many of his fellow Republicans have hopped on the bandwagon.

The twisted political logic behind Trump’s attacks on Haitian immigrant

Trump’s demonization of entire categories of immigrants is dangerous. But when he advocated for a Muslim ban during his first presidential run, he did not direct his followers’ anxiety and loathing toward worshippers at one particular mosque or community. With this new smear, Trump and his running mate are fomenting hatred for a discrete group of 15,000 people in one location. This dramatically increases the risk that their campaign of dehumanization will lead to acts of violence. [ ... ] The Republican ticket’s foray into inciting ethnic hatred in a single municipality cannot be understood as unthinking or impulsive. Sure, Trump routinely makes demagogic statements that are inspired less by political calculation than whatever he happened to just witness on Fox News. But Vance is nothing if not a ruthless and self-disciplined striver. One does not rise from his humble origins to Yale Law School without some ability to filter one’s thoughts or rationally pursue one’s goals. And a person capable of likening Trump to an opiate in 2016, and then becoming an apologist for his insurrection just a few years later, when that posture became politically useful, is plainly willing to do most anything in a calculated bid for power.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Donald Trump Jr. Piles On With Racist Comments About Haitians

Donald Trump Jr. suggested on Thursday that Haitian immigrants were less intelligent than people from other countries, and claimed that there was demographic evidence to back this up. He provided none. “You look at Haiti, you look at the demographic makeup, you look at the average I.Q. — if you import the third world into your country, you’re going to become the third world,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Charlie Kirk on Real America’s Voice, a conservative broadcasting network. “That’s just basic. It’s not racist. It’s just fact.” Claims inherently linking race, nationality and intelligence have long played a role in scientific racism, which uses pseudoscience to try to justify false claims of racial inferiority or superiority.

If there is a provision in Ohio state law which excludes people who incite violence from the ballot, Haitian-Aericans in the state should pursue that route with Trump.

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If you're ever in New Jersey, you can visit the only house ever owned by American poet Walt Whitman. To be more specific, the house is in Camden which is just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Whitman's tomb is at Harleigh Cemetery about 3 km southeast of his old house.

WALT BONUS: In 1890, Whitman's voice was recorded on a primitive wax cylinder. A careful listen reveals what sounds like a trace of a Brooklyn accent.

Walt Whitman And His Window

It is 10:50AM on a recent Friday morning and I'm standing in front of the wooden-frame house at 330 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard in Camden, New Jersey.

It's not as hot as you might think it'd be on a late August day in this part of the United States, but it's hot enough for me.

This generally undistinguished home was Walt Whitman's last residence and the only home he owned outright. When Whitman moved in during the spring of 1884, he wrote his friend Anne Gilchrist and informed her "I have moved into a little old shanty of my own." He would live here until he passed away in the upstairs bedroom on March 26, 1892.

As I learn on my tour, Whitman was not exactly in the best of health in his later years. Whitman suffered a serious stroke in 1873 and was largely confined to his bed during most of his time living at this residence. He was fortunate enough to have several tenants assist him during these years, along with the almost constant companionship of Mary Davis, a nearby widow who moved in to assist him, bringing a veritable menagerie of pets with her.

Making our way through the home, the guide, a retired National Park Service Ranger, informs our tiny tour group that Whitman had to be brought up and down the stairs multiple times a day by Mary for different medical treatments. His one constant request was that he be brought downstairs so he could look out the parlor window to see the "constant cacophony of people going about their business"

As you probably know, there were no mobile apps during the 1880s.

If you wanted something, you had to physically go out and get it---a strenuous requirement, indeed.

For someone so closely associated with what I like to call "sensual pastoralism", I found it a bit unusual that Whitman in his later years ended up being a city mouse. Sure, he had lived in Brooklyn for years (the first proto-hipster?) but that was before the muscular era of exponential industrial urbanism had made Brooklyn look and feel the way it did when it was annexed to the rest of Zoo York City in 1898.

What Whitman experienced from his window is one of the joys that most people experience from the urban condition: the ability to see what people do in close proximity to each other with great frequency, dare I say WITH A MILLION DIFFERENT PERMUTATIONS.

His window onto what is now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard was in fact, his literal window into this world.

To use a contemporary phrase to describe a past condition or state of being, Whitman was truly able to "age in place".

We should all be so lucky.

Some related odds and ends:

I've always loved the Caedmon Records poetry albums. This one features Ed Begley reading some of Whitman's works, including "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

Camden, like most older American cities, has been mightily transformed by a host of processes over the past 75 plus years (residential red-lining, middle class flight, racism, etc). This feature from the folks at Segregation by Design visualizes some of those changes.

A team of scholars continues to work on the Black Camden Oral History project which brings together some compelling interviews and other materials detailing the Black Power Movement at the Rutgers University-Camden campus and in the broader community.

I took the 401 bus from the Water Rand Transportation Center to try one of the (cheese) steaks at Donkey's Place about a mile and a half from the Whitman home. Hot shredded beef with American cheese never tasted so good, let me tell you. Sitting at the bar was the place to be as people drank Donkey shots (don't ask) and talked about heading to the (Jersey) shore later in the day.

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Thank goodness it's not THIS US shaman...