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“Dogs don’t know what they look like. Dogs don’t even know what size they are. No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused — “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo… Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship. Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters. When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish, and it may work, because the dog gets confused again — “I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me?” … A lot of us humans are like dogs: we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like. The most extreme example of this ignorance must be the people who design the seats on airplanes. At the other extreme, the people who have the most accurate, vivid sense of their own appearance may be dancers. What dancers look like is, after all, what they do.”

— Ursula Le Guin, in The Wave in the Mind (via fortooate)

#goddamn can she write #ursula k. le guin #words #quotes #the wave in the mind #ursula le guin

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Gonna reblog this cause I just finished an environmental scan on AI and copyright & I have THOUGHTS but also I have another week before I have time to properly articulate them.

This is really good. We need this. But we also need to ensure ethics is taken into account, not just security

*Here to protect you from the menace of AI; hope you feel safer

#ai #united states news #i have more thoughts #gotta finish finals first #dhs #ai regulation #ai security

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Many people are scared of insects, but you know what's scarier than insects...?

No insects

#light academia #history #ecosystem #nature #nature will work itself out #if we allow it #natural predators #wolves literally changed Yellowstone

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I think it’s important to remember that these adults still exist. They’re just drowned out by a loud minority

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.

then they started fighting Covid precautions.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.

now my parents think climate change is a myth.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.

then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.

now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.

you can guess who they voted for.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.

when did they forget?

#story time #well said #op’s tags #all true and painful #how did they raise me with so much love and fall so short? #did they just do an amazing job ensuring the next generation would surpass them? #because if so #i want to match them in that

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Awe I love this! Kinda like the Sadie Hawkins dance

It’s an old tradition that during a leap year women could propose to men. This was usually depicted as old or ugly women trapping men, but some art focused more on the role reversal and could be quite cute.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the last one because it plays on the idea of “undesirable” people, a tall masculine woman and a shy effeminate man, finding each other but instead of mocking them depicts it as sweet that she could finally ask him because he was too shy and insecure to ask her.

#this is so cute!!!!!!! #leap year #history #I’ve never hear of this before #but it’s adorable #old magazines

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#light academia #you do you #don’t let society get you down

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Idk if anyone cares, but it was a way to keep ships, and consequently trade, safe! Sirmione is on the Lago di Garda (Garda Lake) and was important in the late medieval - Renaissance period as a port. Lago di Garda was along the border of the republics/ duchies of Verona, Venice, Trento, and Milan (today it’s on the border of the regions of Lombardy and Veneto), so it made sense that Verona wanted to defend it. There’s actually a fair amount of surviving castles in the area that were built for defense around the same time.

The castle does have an entire building; OP’s pic only shows the lake defenses (which are at the back of the castle). It’s actually a really cool example of architectural history! Ships could come to the port to trade and not have to be concerned with being attacked in the secure harbor.

It’s an absolutely gorgeous place to visit. The water is so clear and blue.

See? Castle with a protected port and outside wall as fortifications. Plus drawbridge!

Also Sirmione is at the end of a peninsula jutting out into the lake, so it provided additional defense for the coastline. You still can only get there by walking across the bridges or taking a ferry.

Photo credits:

Fist pic is mine, second is Italy - Sirmione - Scaligero Castle.jpg Photo/Map: Arne Müseler / arne-mueseler.com / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (linked to: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.de)

Scaliger Castle, Sirmione, Italy

#port fortification #middle ages #italy #history #ironically #I’ll be there next week #sirmione #now you know #castello di scaligero #today’s brain dump

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Found out that @amtrak-official exists and I think that’s beautiful

#yes we need to remember #corporations pose as friends on social media #to buy sympathy #but yall #it’s trains! #go trains!

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#tweets #palestine #jewish #dark academia #history #activism

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#funny #tweet #twitter

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#book bans

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My hypothesis is that in like 10 years gen z is gonna have a big cult boom the way the boomers did in the 70s

#cults #if tiktok is still around it will have started on there 🤔 #shitpost #things to remember #be aware

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Activists in Tasmania have stuck up more honest promo stickers inside Coles & Woolworths stores, the two dominant supermarket chains in Australia.

#coles #woolies #woolworths #subvertising #adbusting #anti-capitalist #activism

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HMMMM I WONDER

#twitter #wga strike #sag strike #actor strike #writers strike #news coverage #media bias

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Reminder to drink some water!

#haiku bot #drink water #dehydration #reminder #I needed the reminder #so i’m sharing

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Absolutely legendary

One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.

#media #theatre #history #shakespeare #media piracy #media preservation #dark academia

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Update from the WGA on negotiations

#wga strike #writers strike #wga strong #not a surprise #sadly