Ok #booksky, let’s talk.
👎🏼Goodreads, owned by Amazon, fuels its monopoly on books.
👍🏼StoryGraph, a Black woman-owned platform, offers an ethical, ad-free alternative with mood-based recommendations, user control over data, and a focus on inclusivity. Support diversity over corporate power!
A searing and poetic call, in the tradition of Dr King, for us to resist the dream that keeps us asleep, and instead embrace the tension of the moment to pull forward.
New things - My maternal zine, Goatmother, is in a bundle available now, along with a bunch of cool games. Get the link in my other new thing, my substack! I'll be writing about games I'm designing, games I'm playing, sharing pictures of my cat, plus more.
butcherbirdpress.substack.com
💋💘🩷 Me and Boq ...bawk 🐔
#wicked #nessarose #elphaba #wickedthemusical #musically #Moana2 #heihei #funnyvideos #funny #fypシ #meandboq
With unforgettable eyes
Pair of vintage studio portraits of two women, posing silly for the fun of it in long gowns
Irrepressible women, free in their eccentricities
Vintage photo of young woman with cropped hair, in blouse and skirt posing.
Vintage photo of woman in flower dress, shot from below in a forest
Vintage portrait of woman in big hat and loose jacket, sitting on a fence or bench in front of a shrub
Women alone, engaging with the camera and photographer in their own way
Vintage photo of two women standing on a beach, their arms around each other, under a blanket.
Moments of unguardedness, softness, intimacy that only the camera catches before its gone
Vintage black and white photo of a woman dressed up in front of a haystack, wearing a cloche and fur stole. She's turning her face away in profile and hands are clasped with gloves
Each photo has its own mysteries. Why dressed up by a haystack? She's turning her face away - shy? annoyed? flirtatious?
Vintage sepia toned photo of a woman in a knee-length gingham dress looking away from the camera, holding up a wrought iron chair behind her
Posed studio portraits a little unconventional
Black and white vintage portrait of a woman looking back over her right shoulder, laughing, wearing a heavy overcoat and military cap
Candid snaps, laughing and real
Black and white vintage photo of three middle-aged women sitting in a truck bed, dressed up. Handwritten caption reads The "Unholy Three"
Women conspiring, dressed in their best, acting out
A young woman sits in a tree, skirts hiked up, legs crossed, looking at the camera unsmiling.
Women acting out of the ordinary in private, secret snapshots, stolen moments
A black and white vintage photo of a woman in a leather armchair, wearing a very elaborate embroidered blouse and long plain skirt, next to a window with a lace curtain.
Lost Faces and lost memories, lost interiors of homes that no longer exist. Someone found this moment worth saving, once. And that person is gone, so I save it
Vintage photo of a young woman in white lawn dress, dark hair pinned up, genuine smile showing her teeth.
Faces fascinate me. Pretty Faces, yes, but unusual Faces too, Faces with force of personality, Memorable Faces
Vintage photo of female students, early 1900s, dressed in long dark dresses. One lounges in front, laughing.
I collect vintage photos of women from different eras, with a focus on quirky or stylistically unusual compositions or subject matter
Vintage photo of a woman, 1920s, colorized with rosy cheeks and a dark red cloche. Framed in thick cardboard cut from a photo album.
As an antidote to the onslaught of bad news, please enjoy these highlights from a lot of #vintage photos I purchased from a collector's estate:
Title: writing alt text 1. Identify who 2. Expression 3. Description 4. Color 5. Interesting features. Sample description is given of an accompanying photo: A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa. Yellow yuzu friits are floating in the water, and one of the fruits is balanced on the capybara's head.
Here's a quick n easy primer on writing alt text. If you're feeling time constrained even very brief notes is better than nothing, i.e. for this image "capybara in a hot spring". If there's zero alt text there's 0 context at all.
XOXO!
@prisonculture: questions I regularly ask myself when I’m outraged about injustice: 1. What resources exist so I can better educate myself? 2. Who’s already doing work around this injustice? 3. Do I have capacity to offer concrete support and help them? 4. How can I be constructive?
The evergreen words of @prisonculture.bsky.social (whose LET THIS RADICALIZE YOU with @mskellymhayes.bsky.social is required now).
The thing you’re saying, “we need to make, now”?
Already exists.
People are doing that work already.
Go find & support them.
No reinventing wheels. Do research.
i’m gonna just watch this at least once a day and i recommend everyone do the same
Will do, thanks!
Looking for a distraction today? Or just want to help climate scientists?
Immerse yourself in some ship voyages from the 1860s and help transcribe the weather observations taken so we can improve our understanding of how the climate has changed.
Monsoon Voyages: www.zooniverse.org/projects/p-t...
I like the red!
They said Cassandra Was the cursed one But every woman knows too much. I am used by now To my voice getting caught in my teeth. It doesn’t help That I can smell tomorrow’s burning. No one is interested In the geometry Of a falling city. I sit politely and fan myself Listening to old philosophies Trying not to show I see the sparks of death in their eyes. My soles feel the road to come The cool boards of an enemy’s ship The freedom of early surrender.
Doorbell just rang. A package from Australia. The bookseller Nicholas Pounder sent me a small press print of my Times Literary Supplement poem, "Criseyde." It's a private, gift copy, and it has brought tears to my eyes this morning, for so many reasons.
From an email to my grads:
This isn’t my 1st rodeo, but it might be yours — & I wish like hell it wasn’t. But one of the reasons I’m a literary historian is that the work reminds me I'm one of a long, long line of those who have imagined better, & more importantly, worked for better, come what may.
If you’re sober and wobbling right now: get to a meeting, call your sponsor, tell a trusted friend what’s happening in your brain and body.
Losing your hard-earned sobriety over these facist assholes is NOT worth it.
YOU are worth it.
Gentle reminder that most disabled people can NOT leave the United States. Countries don’t want to take in disabled, chronically ill and “high cost health users”. There are serious financial barriers to moving - leaving most people behind.
Spare a thought for all of us tonight - people are scared
More than ever Art is gonna be important, more than ever people will be looking for escapism, we're gonna need stories, w're gonna need stories about fighting Empires, overwhelming forces and winning despite the odds
Write, paint, draw, create, create like you need to breath!
