"O Night, most faithful to these my mysteries, and ye golden Stars, who, with the Moon, succeed the fires of the day, and thou, three-faced Hecate who comest conscious of my design"

(Ovid "Metamorphoses", VII, 179ff)

🎨 JMW Turner "Vision of Medea" (1828)

#bookologythursday

Yes, Swiss scientist Fritz Zwicky coined the term “dark matter” which is impressive, but he also coined the term “spherical bastard” to describe people who are bastards no matter which way you look at them, and I think that should be celebrated more.

Evening.

My photo shows a tall Roman drinking cup made of very pale green, slightly cloudy glass. The surface is decorated with thin, trailed-on threads of blue and white glass that wind around the cup, giving it a raised, textured, pattern. This type of glass decoration is known as ‘snake-thread’. The cup narrows slightly at the bottom and stands on a small, rounded foot, like a pedestal. It looks similar to an ice-cream sundae glass or ornamental vase. This cup and many other glass vessels made in the Roman provinces, have been found in ‘princely’ burials at the Himlingøje Necropolis, dated to Denmark’s Late Roman Iron Age. The site is known for its rich Roman imports, indicating close relations with the Roman empire.

This 1,800 year-old Roman glass cup is so well preserved that the railway construction worker who found it in the 1800s used it as a flower vase not realising its age!
💐 😲

From Himlingøje, Denmark. National Museum of Denmark 📷 by me

#Archaeology

"We are forcing marginalized, disenfranchised people to fight against a black box trained on the data that already contains their disenfranchisement. We’re supposed to live in a world where the computer just gets to say “No”. The computer built, configured and run by a few powerful men."

hasan makes an obvious joke and has generally good politics and the media is like we need to drown him to prove he's not a witch. meanwhile tucker carlson goes live and talks about how demons are real and one tried to eat him in his sleep once and the media is like he seems trustworthy

The Knight of the Flowers, 1894, by Georges Rochegrosse

"Borrowing the Tiger's Power" by Yuzu Katou

Zhang Shan won the gold medal for the mixed skeet shooting event in the 1992 Olympics.

The International Shooting Union *immediately* banned women from competing against men.

“AI is here, so we have no choice but to accept it”

so are immigrants and trans people, but I guess that’s a skill issue

The evolutionary history and unique genetic diversity of Indigenous Americans - Nature Analysis of 128 high-coverage Indigenous American genomes shows extensive diversity shaped by several South American dispersals, ancient Australasian admixture, archaic introgression and long-term ada...

Generation & analysis of largest compendium of whole genomes from Indigenous Americans. 128 high-coverage genomes are shown to "harbour extensive and previously uncharacterized genetic diversity, reflecting at least three dispersals into South America." www.nature.com/articles/s41... #OpenAccess

Satellite imagery of six different locations on Earth, each one looks like a letter. They spell “Pamela”.

This is pretty cool… NASA can use satellite imagery to spell out your name!!

science.nasa.gov/specials/you...

I’m reposting the broth video because sometimes I just need to see it

Ai companies are trying to buy credibility through Hollywood endorsements but all I see are artists permanently branding themselves as scabs

mayan calendar, caption: "my doomsday calculator says the world ended 10 years ago"

People with preexisting conditions also don’t deserve to die

The cover to Luana Saitta's debut novella Merynthia's Master

O traveller, what wonders doth Merynthia, gateway to the dreaming west, hold? What blood magic is wielded in its dark alleys and vaulted sewers?

Fans of sword and sorcery, step right up! My first novella in ebook form is available right here!

luana420.itch.io/merynthias-m...

please read witch hat

Yes!! YES!!!!

relatedly they are also insanely jealous and weird about people having friendships with the opposite sex - both men and women immersed in this content seem to find it suspicious rather than encouraging

A great example of what I mean. People with social capital are often allowed to transgress because the costs are borne by people without it.

screenshot of fact sheet from Planned Parenthood Federation of America (c3) and Planned Parenthood Action Fund (c4) with first bullet point highlighted in yellow: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/68/a6/68a6c411-5e28-4112-b7ec-ce3bc3043574/fact_sheet_c3c4.pdf Republican Lawmakers and President Trump are Decreasing Access to Birth Control and Dismantling the Health Care Safety Net H.R. 1 [the "Big Beautiful Bill"] and its provision “defunding” Planned Parenthood to try to block patients from using Medicaid at Planned Parenthood health centers — combined with the months of withheld Title X funds in 2025 — left entire communities without access to basic care. As attacks from the Trump administration and its backers in Congress continue, health care costs are rising for patients and communities, as other providers cannot fill the gap left by Planned Parenthood health centers. IT’S EVEN HARDER TO GET BIRTH CONTROL Taking away access to birth control and basic care creates contraceptive deserts in more communities *In 2025, over 50 Planned Parenthood health centers closed across 18 states, including over 20 closures since H.R. 1 was passed. Nearly all closures occurred in contraceptive deserts. • When people cannot afford the full cost of contraception, they rely on a network of publicly funded providers that offer free or reduced-fee care through public funding, primarily Medicaid coverage and Title X-funded services for individuals living with low-incomes or uninsured. *Planned Parenthood health centers serve one-third of all female patients seeking contraceptive care at publicly funded health clinics. • Over half of the counties where a Planned Parenthood health center closed now lack any Planned Parenthood provider. In those counties, these centers provided the majority of contraceptive care for low-income women in those counties

The war on birth control access is well underway, it's just less explicit

Planned Parenthood says 50 of its clinics closed last year as a result of an anti-abortion budget provision—and nearly all of them were in contraceptive deserts (link in alt). Translation: it's now harder to get birth control

Eh, why should we research Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease? It's not like these issues could ever possibly affect me, personally, because I, like every Republican, have no conception of time, probability, or cause and effect, I exist in a void filled solely by malicious urges.

It is very funny that when the Strokes speak out about Gaza or Iran people point out they were prep school kids, as if that invalidates things. We want class traitors????

they are calling it the perfect summary of the "keep men out of women's sports" movement

Havtza's animations are like vitamin for my eyes ❤️
www.instagram.com/havtza

REDISTRICT EVERYTHING

ESCALATE TO DE-ESCALATE

GERRYMANDER EVERY SINGLE STATE IMMEDIATELY

CREATE A DELICATE BALANCE OF TERROR NOW

RESTORE DETTERENCE

Etsy popup saying “find out when items like this go on sale, use the Etsy app” and the item is a cool fat orange monster guy

I believe I will