musings on the sun
christina perneta, noor hindi, vincent van gogh, jeanette winterson, zinaida vysota docenko, anne sexton, olga kos, khalil gibran
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 content warning for death, possibly unreality and occaisonally outdated language
Opalized and Pyritized Ammonite fossil
“Zakarpattia is our homeland, but Ukraine is not,” he said. “My grandfather was born in Hungary, raised in Czechoslovakia, lived in the USSR and died in Ukraine, never leaving this village. Political systems come and go, and we just want to live here.”
Throwback to when I studied abroad in Italy and only took pictures of the statues’ butts.
The Tiger Poem in Classical Maya!
The Tiger
He has destroyed his cage
Yes
Yes
The tiger is out
By Nael, Age 6
Literal translation:
he-destroyed his-captive-place
the-tiger yes-yes
he-came.out the-tiger
his-writing master-Na'el
man[of]-6-years
Transliteration:
ʔu-jomow ʔu-baaknal
ʔu-balahm
xt
xt
Joyoy ʔu-balahm
ʔu-tz'ibaal Aj-Naʔel Aj-6-habiy
Character Transliteration (ALL CAPS are characters that stand for full words, lower case are syllabic):
ʔu-jo-mo-wa ʔu-ba-ki-NAL
ʔu-BALAM-la-ma xa-ta-xa-ta
jo-JOY-yi ʔu-BALAM-ma
ʔu-tz'i-ba-li AJ-na-ʔe-le
AJ-6-HAB-bi-ya
Title: Lady with a Rose
Artist: John Singer Sargent
Date: 1882
Style: Realism
Genre: Portrait
I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating
There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”
Thought this section was particularly interesting:
Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”
But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.
You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.
This has one of the most heartwarming historical trans stories I've ever read. In 1971, Carl Macmichael and his cis son spoke to the Sunday paper. Not only did Carl's 15-year-old son support his father, but he was delighted to have a trans dad: "I think he's very brave. It's quite handy to have mum and dad the same person."
Shortly after transitioning, Carl asked Thelma O'Sullivan to become his nurse in 1969. She helped Carl medically transition for 2 years while realizing her feelings for him. "Many people have ridiculed Carl, and I suppose some people will think me odd for falling in love with him. But I don't care," she explained. "He has gone through a great deal and I hope I can give him a little of the happiness that he is seeking."
Like most trans people at the time, Carl claimed to be intersex. Having XY chromosomes and being capable of giving birth is extraordinarily rare, leaving us to wonder if he told this to newspapers for legitimacy. All the names in the article are pseudonyms so there was never any follow-up after 1971.