ghostofasecretary

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thinking about weird ass succulents

haworthia cooperi, albuca spiralis (aka frizzle sizzle), crassula alstonii, and lithops (aka living stones)!

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the sky was so pretty tonight sometimes life is worth living

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ykw possum night

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I want to tell you this story without having to be in it // Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape

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i'm seeing a lot of elderly and midle aged women with purple hair around lately and i think thats beautiful so i made a meme about it

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"Why would anybody be in favor of unhealthy choices?" Because denying people the right to make their own decisions is traumatizing and abusive even if the decisions they're making could be considered unhealthy, and because allowing for some people to be denied the right to make decisions about their own lives and bodies will always be twisted in favor of fascist, bigoted forces even if on paper the goal was to "prevent harm". Denying people bodily autonomy will never be progressive or apolitical

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Brian Haberlin (American, born 1963)

Pygmalion, 2025

Watercolor on paper

21 × 14 in (53.3 × 35.6 cm)

Private collection

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There’s a very sad fic idea somewhere in between the end of Terciel & Elinor and the start of Sabriel in which Elinor (who falls in love with her baby as soon as she sees a vision of her, that same vision being her inevitable Clayr vision of her own death) spends ten or so years watching her daughter through the Sight and becoming more and more determined that Sabriel should exist, which means convincing the Abhorsen ‘I don’t want kids’ Terciel that what he really wants in life is to probably be a single dad.

Terciel, in turn, keeps collaring the nearest senior Clayr and going ‘just how likely is it that this focus on this one possible future is narrowing down the future to just the one future where the thing I want (Elinor staying alive) doesn’t happen while the thing I don’t want (a baby whom I’m afraid will be an orphan like I was) does happen?’

Filris, who is aggravatingly pragmatic, points out that he’s responsible for his own sperm and has a very simple method of preventing this future from happening for as long as he wants and he’s forced to point out that what he wants is for Elinor to stop wanting to die have a baby, and Filris shrugs and goes ‘that’s an entirely different thing you have to work out on your own.’

Another goes ‘look, if you could just find an Abhorsen in Waiting somewhere amongst your distant kin then that might change things,’ resulting in a wild goose chase through the various known and unknown surviving descendants of a family that has so far had 52 known and titled generational heads of the bloodline.

One of them, probably Mirelle, shoots back a ‘does the walker choose the path, or the path, the walker?’ This results in an inchoate screech.

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translatology themed Seinfeld episode where Elaine goes out with a german guy who is an ardent admirer of Walter Benjamin's Task of the Translator so she starts using german idioms translated word for word into english¹. George, a strict adherent to Vermeer's Skopos Theory² ("always been a skopos guy. it's straight to the point. what's going on in hermeneutics? nobody knows! no idea, no skopos!"), makes fun of her for this but then grows a moustache and retrieves his toupé to resemble Benjamin more closely so Wilhelm will think he's in deep translatological thought when he's just looking out the window. the plan backfires, as Steinbrenner associates his new look with Trotsky³ ("shave that beard off George, we're running the Yankees here, not a newspaper!") Jerry is dating a brasilian girl who studied under Rosemary Arrojo, and is accused by Kramer of supporting monolingual regimes bc he wouldn't learn portuguese for her. However, concluding he should show more interest in her work, he tries to impress her by reading Cixous' Reading with Clarice Lispector, in reaction to which the girl breaks up with him ("she broke up with me, George! she said she wanted Cleopatra in bed, not a colonizer!" "Cleopatra?!" "Yes! Can you believe it?" "Nah, you don't have the nose for it.")⁵ Kramer misunderstands Anthropophagic Translation⁶ and thinks Newman wants to eat him.

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I really think we should stop saying "kid-friendly" and start saying "ad-friendly". We shouldn't indulge these companies and their excuses anymore. I also think that continuing to pretend that this is about "protecting the children" pushes a lot of the blame onto kids and teens, who don't have the political power to push through any of this censorship legislature. Corporations and governments are to blame.

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having a complicated relationship with your birth name like no no one is allowed to call me that but also no it's not my deadname but no i don't identify with it but no it's not a separate person. it's mine and i don't want it and you can't have it either

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L'Art et la mode, no. 32, vol. 34, 9 août 1913, Paris. Robe en dentelle bise à volants avec ceinture "pistache” et ruban "pistache" en transparence. Imp. L. Lafontaine, Paris. Bibliothèque nationale de France

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L'Art et la mode, no. 32, 9 août 1902, Paris. Toilette en linon crème, ornée de cerceaux de plis et de bouillonnés. Charmant spencer en taffetas imprimé, serré dans le bas par une coulisse. Col de Cluny garni de ruchettes en taffetas blanc. Lacet de taffetas fermant le boléro, et pattes brodées. Capeline en taffetas noir bouillonné, garnie d’amazones blanches. La marque J.B.D. de ruban de velours avec envers satin ou envers ordinaire est une garantie de qualité supérieure et de fabrication irréprochable. — Se trouve dans toutes les maisons de gros. Bibliothèque nationale de France

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Kinda wish I wasn't feeling more and more vindicated every day about calling it from the start that treating the AI issue like a moral crusade where you have like a moral obligation to prioritize signalling and reaffirming your hatred of generative AI at any possible chance would lead to a lot of ostensibly "progressive" people uncritically parroting extremely reactionary rhetoric.

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yummy star gouache painting

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La Mode illustrée, no. 32, 9 août 1896

Ville de Paris / Bibliothèque Forney

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