It’s actually “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” 

Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.

Also… art forgers like van Meegeren sometimes become a kind of folk hero. A swindler, sure, but a gentleman’s swindler.

I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.

“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.”” And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.

Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.

His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny. 

In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.

His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.

At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”

Just … the levels of con there, the fake photos and … wow. That’s incredible. 

Heroes

Also fun fact we learned in class today: Michelangelo carved a sculpture of a Roman god, broke off the arm, and then buried it. The sculpture was dug up and was considered to be an authentic Roman artefact, until Michelangelo came along with the missing arm and called shenanigans on himself, just to prove he was as skilled a sculptor as the ancient Romans.

If somebody can recreate a master artist so well it’s nearly impossible to tell the works apart, the forger should get more fucking credit for being so amazing at art. Seriously.

Crows are scary They

Guys I’m really scared of crows now. (q) 

Yeah but have you seen this 

A colleague of my dad’s lives next to a lake, and looked out the window one morning to see a duck trapped in the ice. A crow swooped down. “Oh hell,” she thought, expecting carnage, because crows are opportunists. But the crow chipped at the ice with its beak until the duck was free.

Idk of this counts but a few crows saved me from a magpie swooping attack once ,they’re bros who can tell when magpies are being unreasonable and need to chill

I love crows so damn much. When I was fifteen, I hit a pretty serious bout of depression, to the point I was in my room for months. Well, a family of crows made a nest in a tree outside my window. There were two parents and two chicks. One chick was healthy and strong. One was weak, and had a caw like something being strained. It sounded more like a rooster crowing and so my parents jokingly named him ‘Buck’.Well… months passed and Buck’s sibling was taught to fly. His parents focused on the sibling because the sibling was strong. The father stayed behind to try and teach Buck, but I saw him try to fly, fail, and crash to the floor. His father helped him back up into the tree.

Every day, I would watch Buck from my window until one day I opened it and started talking to him. He was small and gangly and he couldn’t caw right. His feathers were all over the place and I felt a kinship. So I made a deal with him. I told him that if he could do it, if he could fly, then I could find the strength to get up. Well… near the end of the season, after talking with him every day, I finally saw him get out of the nest. He went to the edge of his branch, braced himself, and jumped… and just before he hit the ground, he soared back up into the sky. I cheered harder than I ever had before.

That winter, Buck left the area. I was crestfallen. I felt like I’d lost a friend. But I was so damn proud of him. 

Cut to the next spring? I’m walking up the driveway one day when suddenly I hear a sound… a broken caw. I look up, and Buck is sitting in a tree above my head. He stared at me and puffed his feathers, then hopped down in front of me and cawed again. I was so damn thrilled, and I told him how proud I was of him. He ruffled his feathers and then soared off into his old tree. 

That summer? I heard two broken caws. One from Buck… and one from his chick.

Cut to ten years later? We have a family of crows who all have a very distinct caw and they come here and spend every spring, summer, and fall on our property. Buck still greets me every spring.

that last reply made me wanna cry. that’s so beautiful.

Don’t forget the Russian Crow SLEDDING DOWN A ROOF not once, but twice. 

this one morning i kept hearing really loud caws, i remember it was like 5am, LIKE REALLY LOUD AND ANNOYING AND AGGRESSIVE, so loud that i could hear it through a closed window, and i eventually went outside to check it out. there was a crow on my front lawn, it had an injury on its head and couldn’t fly and there were two other crows circling right above it, and they were cawing like mad. 

i tried to get close and take a better look and one of them dived super low and tried to attack me. so i went back in the house and chopped some sliced raw meat and tossed it at him from a distance.

a few more times later, very soon after, they could tell i was trying to help, and did not attack me. i was “allowed” to walk up close and pick him up, he couldn’t drink water properly so i had to dip my finger in a bowl and stick it in his mouth.

i did this few times a day and it went on for about a week before he disappeared, i thought he recovered and left, but he came back the next day and lands on me, and i see him around the block quite often, and he would come sit on my shoulder for a few minutes and then fly away again. i feel like i’ve adopted a son.

Best birbs !!

your son is Beautiful and Strong

every time I see this post it has different crow stories and every time I reblog it again because all crow stories are good stories

Because sometimes what you need most is a real-life muppet in the form of a fluffy Tawny Frogmouth chick. This little cotton ball with a beak and two legs hatched on August 31st at Vogelpark Olching, a bird park located outside of Munich, Germany. The chick is the very first Tawny Frogmouth to hatch at the park and has been aptly named… wait for it… Fluffy.

Head over to ZooBorns to learn more these awesome birbs.

[via ZooBorns]

I want Terry Crews and Vin Diesel to do a buddy cop movie where they are both secret nerds but they don’t want the other to know. Like Vin Diesel plays D & D on weekends and Terry likes to create epic crossover fan art. Somehow they have to work undercover at Comic Con and for what ever reason I need Daniel Radcliffe to be the villain. 

I’d like to add: not a character played by Dan Radcliffe. Dan Radcliffe, appearing as himself.

no, no wait… I want Elijah Wood to play Daniel Radcliffe.

Elijah Wood plays Daniel Radcliffe and his evil sidekick is Elijah Wood played by Daniel Radcliffe

Rosario Dawson and Zoe Saldana are an secretly nerdy FBI duo who get dragged into the mess. Dawson resents Diesel because he was a bad DM and rules hound back when he introduced her to the game, Saldana ships a rival pairing of Crew’s big OTP and they’ve had flame wars through their alter egos. The teams have to learn to work through their nerd differences to solve the crime.

Sigourney Weaver is their boss, she keeps asking for updates so she can vicariously go to the con through them.

oK But thisss

European raven

Turkish raven

North African raven

Himalayan raven

Western (American) raven

AUSTRALIAN RAVEN

look at it look at that weird birb it doesn’t know how to raven

other ravens: caw caw

australian ravens: aUGH AUUuuuGH AAAAUUUUUUughhhhhHHHhhhhhhh

it genuinely didn’t occur to me that this was weird that i’d never heard a crow or raven caw in my life and frnakly the australian raven noise is the most common noise to me and it means “it’s the morning now”. i can’t imagine life without it. its background noise i didn’t even think to identify as coming from somewhere. it’s just There.

quoth the raven, “aUGH AUUuuuGH AAAAUUUUUUughhhhhHHHhhhhhhh”

it sounds like a depressed kazoo.

Wait a minute… how do non-Australian ravens sound? Do they not sound like this?

@derinthemadscientist

That’s what the European one sounds like

Hooooly shit. According to this writer, Xfinity is falsely impersonating its customers in order to post anti-net neutrality comments on the FCC website.

Try to even it out by visiting gofccyourself.com and hitting +EXPRESS and leaving a pro-net neutrality comment.

Oh, and they just sued a cease and desist against the website outing them on this:

Oh

My name was on there and I’ve never been a comcast customer…. you better check for your name!

wow, I was on there too, and same here, never been a comcast customer in my life. check and make sure! this is so gross

SIGNAL FUCKING BOOST. Fuck Comcast.

Peter S. Beagle (via fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment)

“If the muse is late for work, start without her.”

(via watsonshoneybee)

YOU CAN COMMENT HERE. As of right now there’s only 10k. Public comments close May 26th (for Bear Ears, June 10th for the rest) so get on this shit while you can.

These are the places up for consideration:

Basin and Range Bears Ears Berryessa Snow Mountain Canyons of the Ancients Carrizo Plain Cascade Siskiyou Craters of the Moon Giant Sequoia Gold Butte Grand Canyon-Parashant Grand Staircase-Escalante Hanford Reach Ironwood Forest Mojave Trails Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Rio Grande del Norte Sand to Snow San Gabriel Mountains Sonoran Desert Upper Missouri River Vermilion Cliffs   Katahadin Woods Marianas Trench Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Pacific Remote Islands Papahanaumokuakea Rose Atoll

COME ON PEOPLE. TELL THEM WHY THESE NATIONAL MONUMENTS MATTER TO YOU. If people can leave 50k comments about why the EPA should keep regulations, and crash the FCC’s website over net neutrality, you can bring it for our national monuments.

You can mail in comments here: Monument Review, MS-1530, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20240.

In general making the offline effort has more impact than internet comments, so send something if you can

Reblogging as I edited a couple things to clarify: Bear Ears comments are closed but the rest are still open!

me: i hate queerbaiting

a show: *baits me*

me: *shoving popcorn in my mouth* you turn my home into a house of lies and i continue to allow it because this is all i have

Today I learned that the university of Coimbra in Portugal has a great 18th-century library, the Biblioteca Joanina, that maintains a colony of bats to effectively control the population of paper-eating insects called papirófagos. These bats are less than an inch long. They roost during the day behind the bookcases and come out at night. There doesn’t seem to be any English word for papirófago, a cursory search turns up no details about what sort of insect they are, and ngl I am slightly concerned about them as a phenomenon. But I think my overarching point here is clear: 

This library keeps tiny bats that look after the books.

I’m here for tiny bats saving books.

Aaaahhh!!

Somebody please write a cute comic about a small human and their tiny bat friends having library adventures.

TWO libraries have bats. Mafra Palace Library has bats eating bugs too.

You are only making him more powerful

Full Image - Twitter - Comics

guys i’ve found my new reaction image for literally every fucking piece of news that comes out of this godforsaken administration

this is one of the most magnificent stinkers I’ve read all year

Zadie Smith (via wellconstructedsentences)

Get. On. This. Read the guidelines first, but do it.

Super easy. Go for it.

Direct link [x]

Due May 15 2017, at 11:59 PM ET

Peter Piper probably never picked a peck of pickled peppers for the peppers can’t have been pickled prior to picking. The pickling procedure takes place post picking, and the possibility of Peter piper picking a peck of pickled peppers is preposterous. The paradoxically penned poem positing Peter’s picking of the pickled peppers is past probability due to its postulating on peppers that were pickled pre-picking.

Perhaps Peter is a petty pilferer, picking a peck of peppers from the platform of a plant where peppers are processed for pickling in preparation for purchase by the populace?