Jan 21: another Kimono creation by kimono-designers of ‘Modern Antenna’

German hobo signs / thieves’ cant code, 1540

A very early depiction of hobo signs, the earliest I’ve ever seen for sure, from a little book written by a German judge somewhere in Werse (North Rhine-Westphalia today). It’s rogue literature but in the sense of “beware of rogues!”, not rogues are cool or anything. The hobo signs are called Zeichen in the book (which just means “signs”, in general), but by the 18th century they would be known by the cant term Zinken.

So who used them, exactly? Who were these rogues and vagabonds who communicated in secret code? The book calls them Brenner (literally “burners”) or Mordtbrenner (arson AND murder!), and it’s a bit above my pay grade to give you specifics with any certainty. But from what I gather, it’s a mishmash of people on the road due to their profession (tinkers, peddlers, etc), beggars, mercenaries or ex-soldiers left to their own devices, fugitives (I’m guessing that Läufer, literally “runner”, means on the lam), and various itinerant groups.

May or may not be relevant: the Yenish people, who emerged as a distinct itinerant group in Germany and neighbouring regions in the 19th century, are theorised to have “descended from members of the marginalized and vagrant poor classes of society of the early modern period”. And their language is cant-adjacent: “Yenish speakers generally speak their local German dialect, enriched by the Yeniche vocabulary, which is derived in part from Rotwelsch, with influences from Yiddish, Romani, and other minority languages of the region.” (Rotwelsch is basically the German thieves’ cant.)

The book translates the “signs and secret codes”, and also gives a list of known vagrants, which I find chilling. This isn’t a description of a criminal class, it’s criminalisation in action, of an already marginal class. The list includes names, descriptions (a lot of them have red beards, for some reason), occupations (beggar, carter, traveller, soldier), and comments like “wicked man”.

I don’t actually speak German, so if anyone wants to give it a go and translate any of this to English, it would be fantastic (for background, this may help).  

Source: Der Mordtbrenner Zeichen vnd Losunge, etwa bey Dreyhundert vnd Viertzig, ausgeschickt, by Ambrosius Trota, published in 1540 in Wittenberg. You can download it as a PDF, no OCR though.

commission for @evilprincess900000

Posting a whole comic! Mending a Rift, 2022. 34 pages. Sort of sci-fi, sort of fantasy, maybe a little grim, very much slice-of-life.

A digital PDF of this comic is available in my web shop.

Control Room, 2004 (embroidery on black velvet) & Space Station, 2006 (embroidery on canvas)

Farhad Moshiri

Part of me secretly believes that if I make a really, really good and perfect piece of art that it will prevent people from ever being mean to me again. They'll say, "Wait, aren't you the one that made the really, really good and perfect piece of art? I'm so sorry for what I said. I thought the art was so good. I wish I had never hurt your feelings, now that I realize you are the one who made the art. I also have decided to agree with your political opinions. Here's a gift card."

obsessed with this costume

We the People

remember when the porn ban was happening and everyone was moving to different sites and someone made a forum called tumblr 2 and tumblr sent a cease and desist signed by david karp with the shittiest elementary school cursive signature youve ever seen bc i think abt that a lot

literally nothing beats this

Papier-mâché horses from the "Khokhloma Artist" studio in Gorky (USSR, 1970s-80s)

x

I keep seeing people on tumblr saying most people aren't as online as we are, online stuff had little to do with most americans making dumb choices, they're just racist and sexist and mean naturally, but look at how much shitty rightwing influence got pumped out there intentionally for so long. And it's not just young people, even though even my 12-year-old son who is not interested in that shit already knows who logal paul and andrew tate are. These podcasts and twitter/youtube bro guys have a HUGE following and influence on adult men.

garden variety conservative transphobia is going to get worse but radical feminism is also going to get worse. if youre a cis women terfs are going to try to recruit you and make you believe that the reason your rights are at stake is because of trans people. they're going to tell you that all men are your violent oppressors and they're going to include trans women in that category. they're gonna tell you about women who are gender traitors and joined the enemy and they're going to point to trans men. don't believe them. trans people are not your enemy, we have no power over you, and we desperately need your support and your solidarity.

be aware of radfem pipelines and dog whistles too. be skeptical of anyone that talks about the divine feminine or correlates birthing, menstruating, or female reproductive organs with womanhood. be especially skeptical of people who use those biological things as reasons to why women are more spiritual, or more in tune with nature, or just that they're better than men (read: anyone they decide is a man)

radical feminism is an expected reactionary outcome from cis women who are being oppressed by conservatives, especially when all they practice is ciscentric, liberal, white feminism. they feel the need to be radicalized but don't have the experience and information to pinpoint the true source of their suffering. trans people are not your enemy, AMAB people are not your enemy, anyone who identifies as a man is not your enemy. we're all being crushed under the same stone

also beware anyone going on about how the Democrats’ loss was partly to blame on the issue of trans rights. I’m already seeing politicians and other Hot Takers on the left say that open support for trans people needs to be jettisoned immediately in order to win back mainstream favor. This is bullshit and poison— don’t listen to it. We can’t abandon each other.

girl mutuals who want to kiss and eat cunt & so forth should be paid by the state to go see each other

WRONG BLOG

Tibetan Mail Carrier

my other grounding technique is remembering that the earliest abolitionists & the earliest suffragists had no proof that the world would ever make possible what they fought for and indeed many of them did not live to see it come to pass. and yet they did not succumb to despair so it would be disrespectful to their memory to let it overtake me

I hate hearing people talk about how donald pulled this off. Media that pumped out or sanewashed or normalized decades of rightwing shit pulled it off, algorithms that exponentially made people scared and polarized and more cultish, more sexist and racist and anti-trans and angry that culture changes even when it doesn't impact them pulled this off. Soaking in centuries of toxic colonial racist puritan punishment libertarian little house on the prairie and 50's nostalgia slime pulled it off. The predictable general tendency to kick out the current administration because you're a spoiled shit who has never looked outside your own country or facebook feed to see how tough the rest of the world has it after a global pandemic pulled it off. Sitting out or constantly complaning about democrats sucking right before an important election or chanting tear it all down because america deserves it may have helped pull this off, but also people having no education in what the government does and swallowing a decade of online mis- and disinformation actively shoved in their faces that got passed along by the left and right about how democratic government is so useless and corrupt and participating in it means you're not galaxy brain enough and you should help put in a spicy wild dude and that will fix everything pulled it off.