#the event of the century

[awakeanytime]

slithering out of my hole for mcr5 i havent seen sunlight in years

[cy-lindric]

His Majesty's little meow meows (from La Dame de Monsoreau)

[vegetas-mustache]

Ohohoho! Last Radship week 2023 work from me is for day 5, for the prompt wedding/princess

Per usual, minors DNI as this work is explicit.

[leulahart]

Some more pre-canon doodles!

Alternative title: Katniss and her blondies :)

[a-most-beloved-fool]

I'm thinking about Gillian Taylor, lesbian (in my heart), standing on that stolen bird-of-prey on their way back to the 23rd century, and trying to figure out the correct way to (tactfully) ask if Kirk and Spock are gay.

Back in the 80s, she'd just assumed that they were gay. I mean, dressed like that? She'd also, however, assumed that they were on drugs, probably a hallucinogen of some kind, which - turned out to be not quite true. So, really, anything was fair game, now, and she no longer knew if they were gay. Maybe that's just how men in the 23rd century were with each other.

She tried to watch, to analyze their actions objectively, but with how busy they were making sure that the ship didn't explode, they weren't really interacting all that closely with one another, and she truly couldn't tell.

So instead she just stood there, next to Admiral Kirk, trying to find the right words to use, words which wouldn't be heard as an insult if she was wrong or if the 23rd century was no more enlightened about these sorts of things.

And then Dr. McCoy walked in and, casual as you please, said, "Jim, where the devil has your husband run off to?"

Husband. He said the word so easily, like it was - normal. Like it was safe and accepted, for a man, an admiral, even, to be gay. He didn't even glance at Gillian as he said it, never even seemed to consider that someone might react poorly. Maybe no-one ever did, in the 23rd century.

Everything sort of faded out of focus for Gillian, after that. She didn't hear another peep until McCoy, concerned, put his hand on her shoulder, and asked if she was alright.

She just smiled in response and told him that, yes, she was doing very well.

Because if Admiral Kirk could have a husband... that meant that she could have a wife.

Oh yes, she thought she'd be quite happy in the 23rd century.

[chaoticamelay]

elon "world's most dangerous antisemite" musk spoke at a far-right extremist political rally in germany and said he thinks people need to 'move beyond' the holocaust, so i've shelved my original post planned for international Holocaust Remembrance Day and instead i am going to talk about how european cities are built with jewish gravestones.

during ww2 the Nazis and their allies were in search of places to get good quality stone for building. then they realized they had countless: the cemeteries of once thriving jewish communities they were targeting. An unknown number (we will never know exactly how many, but it is high) of matzevot (jewish gravestones) were removed from our ancestor's graves and used as construction materials. even after 1945 our cemeteries kept being used as quarries. because our communities were never the same afterwards.

all over Europe, you can find roads, sidewalks, buildings, tools, christian gravestones... even a children's sandbox, made of gravestones stolen from our old jewish cemeteries. sometimes the cemetery land was 'repurposed' into something else as well, with no regard for the human remains there.

Poland

There were 1200 jewish cemeteries in Poland alone, and more than four hundred of them did not survive the war times. They were rearranged to provide sites for housing estates, sports fields, garbage dumps, or sand quarries. The sand mined from them to build houses was mixed with human remains. Only a hundred and fifty graveyards still have more than a hundred gravestones, but before the holocaust there were at between a few hundred thousand or a few million.

Between 2008-2011, photographer Łukasz Baksik documented some places in poland where Jewish gravestones were ''repurposed" during and after the war. Here are his photos: Matzevot for Everyday Use

Top left: A cowshed in Starowola by Parysów, a village in east-central Poland, made of cobbled together jewish gravestones. Top right: A children's sandbox in Szczecin, a city in the West Pomerania Province built in the 1960s/70s. Bottom left: School playing courts in Kazimierz Dolny, a town in eastern Poland. The schoolyard was built, in the 1950s, on the grounds of a Jewish cemetery, and there are fragments of matzevot in the walls. Bottom right: In the town of Brok, in eastern Poland, the interior of a workshop contains a mounted grindstone carved from a jewish gravestone.

Czech Republic and Ukraine

In the 1980s, cobblestones made from Jewish gravestones were used to pave a busy part of Prague's Old Town, a main city square called Wenceslas Square on Na Prikope, a popular shopping street. (As of 2019 they are apparently going to be returned to the Old Jewish Cemetery).

In 2018, a road in L’viv, Ukraine was being repaired when city workers found over 100 Jewish gravestones used in paving it. Matzevot have been found here in the past and brought back to the Jewish cemetery by volunteer teams.

Left: Cobblestones used to pave a busy street in Prague, taken from Jewish headstones. The Hebrew letter hey and the numbers 895 are visible. Right: Matzevot used as paving in Lviv, being rescued by volunteers.

Belarus and Lithuania

in Vilnius, Lithuania, jewish tombstones were used all over the city in construction, including for an electric transformer substation, church steps, and the grand stairway in the trade union headquarters. They are being rescued and returned to the cemetery as they are found.

In Belarus, matzevot were used for house foundations, porches, fences, backyard paving, roads, or they were turned into millstones.

Left: A man examines the memorial made from gravestones that had been used to build stairs in Vilnius. Right: 2016 photo of Jewish gravestone used as stairway of church in Vilnius.

Greece

People often forget about Sephardic Jews and the Holocaust, but Greece and especially Salonika (Thessaloniki), the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," were devastated by the Shoah. Salonika's major jewish cemetery contained hundreds of thousands of graves- when it was completely destroyed by the Nazis (with the help of Greeks who wanted the land), the gravestones were used in construction projects around the city. Aristotle University sits on the site today. Fragments of matzevot can still be found around the city in churches, buildings, even sidewalks, although now when they're found they're brought to the new Jewish cemetery.

Broken up Jewish gravestone used for construction In Thessaloniki.

Eighty years is not a long time. We are not moving on. We are seeing rising fascism, scapegoating of minorities, violent nationalism. We said never again, not for anyone, not ever - the history books are right there telling us this is wrong, and we are NOT going to ignore words written with blood.

now that i have written all this out i don't actually know how to end the post so. i guess let's go with this: i'm not naive. ordinary people do terrible, awful things and I see how it is hard to trust anyone to not do terrible things to you when it matters most. but ordinary people also do wonderful, life-affirming things! i am a sephardic jew who is here because ordinary people resisted. stood up and threw themselves into the gears of the genocidal system that tried to kill my ancestors in greece and italy during the Shoah. people hid their neighbours, became resistance fighters. in athens a police chief gave jews false id cards and an archbishop gave jews false baptismal certificates. my family always taught me and my siblings that solidarity saves lives. you can start that right now!

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! –Mario Savio

[upennmanuscripts]

On October 31, Curator @leoba will bring out Ms. Codex 1677, a collection of occult texts copied and compiled by Charles Rainsford and mainly comprising prayers, lists of divine names for invocations (p. 180-189), and instructions for conjurations taken from works attributed to well-known occultists such as John Dee and Richard Napier.

Coffee With A Codex is an informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different manuscript and the expertise of one of our curators. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Register 🔗 :

[ylissebian]

HAPPILY PHOREVERAFTER 💗

[surreal-duck]

es rarepair week 2024 day 1 | AU/future

lil ghostic au of mine!!! yuzuru and the rest of fine are long since trapped souls in an abandoned mansion of which rst come across while looking for shelter during a storm :] it doesnt um. particularly end well

[yeoldenews]

A mother's word for word transcription of the imaginary phone call her four-year-old made to Santa Claus in 1911.

(source: The Harbor Beach Times, December 22, 1911.)

Through some outrageous case of serendipity I found a recording of another phone call this same child made 60 years later. Though I have to say his choice of conversational partner is a definite downgrade from the first call.

[zeravmeta]

i know that the witch king as we know him probably hadn't been fully conceptualized early on when we had IS1 but i think it would have been hilarious had we found out that Ceobe had also somehow broken into and out of the genesis spire since like, one of the IS collectible is the fucking Witch Kings Horn Itself meaning that ceobe had to have one point seen it and recognized it as super cursed and thus also Taken It

like imagine in the final sections of zwillingsturme when the witch king is talking to fremont and he's like "yes the liches of the sarkaz are some of the only few beings to have reached this place. the ancient feranmut of yan, the ascended consciousness of the ocean, the travelling machines from beyond the fake sky..." and then his face twists. "...that one weird perro that one time who made off with one of my horns"

[heretherebedork]

EXCUSE ME. IS THAT WHO I THINK IT IS.

Impressive.

[finemealcreates]

Superbat Week 2024!

I took on the momentous task of doing a fanfic and fanart for each day of Superbat week! All of my fics are up here on ao3 (i put 'em in a series together), but here is all of the fanart I did as well!

Day 1: Identity Shenanigans | Costume Swap

Day 2: Ordeals on the Road | Traveling Together

Day 3: Xenobio Extravaganza | Alien Biology

[Oops! Sorry, too NSFW for Tumblr, but you can view it here]

Day 4: This is a Love Story/Detective Story | Undercover

Day 5: We are Family | Tired Dads™️

Day 5: It’s an AU Kind of Day | 18th Century

Day 7: FREE DAY!!! | Superbat?

Thank you everyone for all the kind words and supportive of me throughout this week! It was a blast, and I hope you all had a great Superbat week too! Already excited for what next year holds 💙

And huge thank you to the folks at @superbatweek2024 for hosting this event, you gave such wonderful prompts and did a great job!

[phoenixyfriend]

Jfc this bs about the Gulf of Mexico is. So much. And Denali? and Google maps is going along with it. It's. So stupid. And insane. And it's going to have actual repercussions.

[upennmanuscripts]

Way back in February, 2023, we took a look at LJS 443, a 15th century Armenian collection of texts on the calendar. From the highlight reel you'll see it's chock full of diagrams and tables, and includes a few pretty colorful headings, too. You can watch the full 30-minute video at the link below, and if you're interested in joining #CoffeeWithACodex in real time check out the schedule and details on our website: https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/coffee-codex

🔗:

[emmatcha]

I just remembered the “you’re a coward percy jackson!” scene in the last olympian and started tearing up. yes i am dramatic, but imagining what the percabeth tension will look like on screen makes me so emotional these days.