memento mori
@tenposike
just a little scrapbook where i reblog posts on the topic of death and posts that celebrate life and history. no original content. content warning for death, possibly unreality and occaisonally outdated language
Pride, Greenwich Village, June 1986
Rainbow Eucalyptus trees get their colorful appearance when they shed their bark, starting with bright green patches that gradually transform into orange, maroon, and blue hues
Do you think cremation places bother to clean the giant blender between "customers"? When they grind up your desiccated bones to produce fake ashes for your loved ones to scatter, are said loved ones also getting little bits of everyone who's come before you?
@masterboa relied:
the blender? i thought they just set you on fire
At first, yes, but that's not where the "ash" comes from. Incinerating a human body produces very little ash; 80% of you is water, and 80% of what's left after you boil off the water is carbon, which the cremation process drives off as oxidised gas. What's actually left behind is small amounts of soot from burning your fatty parts, and a pile of dehydrated bone fragments. Those fragments are then swept into a large blender-like device called a "cremulator" and ground to fine powder, which is what goes in the urn.
(Did you ever wonder why public venues are so touchy about people "scattering ashes" without permission? That's bone powder, baby!)
Although she doesn’t address whether or not the cremulator gets cleaned after each and every use, it’s a good start for if people have other questions about the cremation process.
FRAGMENTS OF THEDA BARA’S CLEOPATRA HAVE BEEN FOUND GUYS.
update on this: toronto silent film festival just announced they have scanned the fragments and they total to about 40 seconds of footage. they also said they’ll be uploading it to youtube soon !!!
when there’s an old photograph, AND the guy in it is really old, it’s like, wow, that guy is super old
Conrad Heyer, photographed in 1852 at the age of 103. He was born in 1749 and is thought to be the earliest-born person ever photographed.
i am experiencing Emotions about locking photographic gaze with a man who was born in the middle of the 18th century
this dude was an adult already during the american revolutionary war (ish)? he was getting real time news of the unfolding of France’s emperors? what
whaaat
he is looking at me
Other leading candidate for oldest person photographed
Named Caesar, he was photographed around the same time but possibly was as much as a decade older; but as he was enslaved, the records were fragmentary. He’d been a free man for ten years when this photo was taken.
embroidery on blouse, by Elsa Olsson/Fevernest, 2019
also if you wanna combat the "women in the past only crossdressed because of misogyny!" you have GOTTA read chapter 11 in Transgender Warriors where leslie feinberg does such a good job constructing an argument against this kind of radfem reductionism
""No wonder you've passed as a man! This is such an anti-woman society," a lesbian friend told me. To her, females passing as males are simply trying to escape women's oppression- period. She believes that once true equality is achieved in society, humankind will be genderless. I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't predict human behavior in the distant future. But I know what she's thinking- if we can build a more just society, people like me will cease to exist. She assumes that I am simply a product of oppression. Gee, thanks so much."
"First, let's talk about who can pass as another sex. My same friend reminds me periodically that she too might have passed as a men a century ago to escape women's oppression. She stares right past my gender expression as she speaks. [...] I don't want to burst her bubble. Everyone deserves untrammeled dreams. But I want to tell her that, in the dead of winter, if she was bundled up against the cold, with a hood or hat covering her head, some man in a deli might call her "sir." But could she pass as male on a board ship, sleeping with and sharing common facilities with her fellow sailors for decades and not be discovered? Of course, hundreds of thousands of women have dreamed of escaping the economic and social inequities of their lives, but how many could live as a man for a decade or a lifetime? While a woman could throw on men's clothing and pass as a man for safety on dark roadways, could she pass as a man at an inn where men slept together in the same beds? Could she maintain her identity in daylight? Pass the scrutiny of co-workers? Would she really feel safer and more free? How could females have lived and been accepted as men without hormones or surgery? They must have been masculine; they must have been trans-gendered. If they were not, how could they pass? We don't know how each of the thousands who passed from female to male over the centuries would define themselves today- whether as transgender or transsexual or drag or any other modern definition. The point is that their gender expression allowed them to transition. I just don't believe that the debate about why "women pass as men" can be understood only in the light of women's, or of lesbian and gay, oppression. It has to be viewed in the context of trans history in order to make sense."
"Look at George Sand, the nineteenth-century novelist. It's true that she could not have published without a male nom de plume at that time. But if that's all there was to her identity, why did she wear men's clothing? Why was she attacked for masculine behavior? And if it was just a question of lesbian oppression, what was she doing in bed with Chopin? If passing from female to male is simply motivated by the need to escape lesbian oppression, then why have females who have passed as males chosen other men as lovers?"
"Finally, if so many females have passed as men only to escape women's oppression, then why have so many males passed as women? While it is biologically easier for a female to pass as a young boy than for a male to pass as a woman, there are many, many examples in the modern era of those who passed from male to female."
"We have not always been forced to pass, to go underground, in order to work and live. We have a right to live openly and proudly. When we are denied those rights, we are the ones who suffer that oppression. But when our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exist in human society. I have lived as a man because I could not survive openly as a transgendered person. Yes, I am oppressed in this society, but I am not merely product of oppression. That is a phrase that renders all our trans identities meaningless. Passing means having to hide your identity in fear, in order to live. Being forced to pass is a recent historical development. It is passing that is a product of oppression."
some of my favorite paintings of all time are the dozens of self portraits this one dude in the 1800s made of himself in clown paint. like, there's so many. and they're all bangers
this isn't even 25% of them. check out armand henrion for more. yes this is all he ever painted hope you like it
neue-muslim-lekture
Documentary is called “The Secret History of Writing” done by BBC
this has always fascinated me. I first learned it about 25 years ago, and ever since, every time I see a capital letter A a tiny voice inside me goes “bull!”
Fun to see an actual scholarly version of this, because I first read it as explained (-ish) by one of Kipling’s “Just So Stories” a very, very long time ago…
This shit was barbaric even for 2001
You can just feel the presence of computer viruses in these pictures
girl it straight up smells like malware in here