Dr. Gachey with foxglove, 1890

Some of Van Gogh’s best work was done during a period of his life that he spent in a hospital being treated for his mental health problems. I could be wrong but I think Starry Night was among those.

This is consistently the case. Creators tend to do their best work when they are in a healthy place and receiving proper treatment and not being self destructive in their efforts to cope. Go figure.

All our experiences, good and bad, inform what we create, but suffering is not the price of great art. Suffering is what prevents artists from completing great art.

(I bring to mind this @tkingfisher / Ursula Verson quote about once a week <3)

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

Goes insanely hard

To provide further context from what I understand the bill wanted to take the rights guaranteed to the Maori in said treaty and expand them to all New Zealand citizens. The issue with that is that it sort of defeats the point of the protections of the treaty.

The Treaty of Waitangi is not even that good of a treaty. But it is better than any treaty the Crown signed with indigenous peoples

And it absolutely was not meant to be

The treaty as written screws over Māori, and was written in Te Reo Māori and English with deliberately misleading translations to Te Reo Māori. I'm not an expert by any means, but basically the Te Reo Māori version has clauses that promise much more independence and sovereignty, while the English version does not

However

The English version promises them rights as Citizens

From what I remember from University 10+ years ago, this clause, this sentence, was added last minute by the writer of the treaty. Like, right before the big signing at Waitangi.

And the Crown was PISSED

Because now they had a legally binding document that promised, in their own language, to treat Māori with the same rights as they would English. Which was absolutely not the goal. The goal was to trick Māori into signing away their lands and that honestly still did happen. The treaty was not a good faith proposal by the Engliah.

But its still better than anyone else got, and it's better than no treaty. And because nowadays we can't just ignore the Te Reo Māori side of the treaty, the government's of the past few decades have been honouring Māori sovereignty, honouring their stewardship of the land, and undoing a lot of the bad faith "sales" or straight up stolen land.

Except our current fuck nuggets, who want to make Te Reo Māori an endangered language again, and steal back that land because they want to mine on it and sell it and they hate that Māori stewardship is so environmentally focused and not profit driven.

So, in a way, the current government is more true to the intentions of the Crown who initially came up with the treaty.

But since those guys were colonising bastards, I don't see "honouring" them as anything good.

Even with criticism of the treaty, without it, Māori would lose a lot of protections to their lands, their culture, their language, and as a country we would go backwards to a time when they were even more discriminated against

Toitū te tiriti

Uphold the treaty

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

if you'd like to watch something but everything feels too much, here is a 24/7 puppy livestream provided by the finnish national broadcaster. the bordercollie puppies are now 11 days old. the livestream will continue for eight weeks in total. this is an annual event and super popular in finland but you can watch it from abroad as well! the puppies will get names on sunday this week.

The puppies have names now! ☺️ They are Tuike (twinkle), Säde (beam), Välke (sparkle), Kipinä (spark), Salama (lightning bolt), Rusko (glow at twilight and dawn), Hämy (twilight), Pilke (glint), Kulo (burning dry grass) and Tähti (star) ☺️

While the Onion buying InfoWars is indeed extremely funny, very few of the posts I've seen commenting on the sale have mentioned that the families of the Sandy Hook victims apparently agreed to voluntarily reduce their lawsuit payout as part of a deal to ensure that the Onion would acquire InfoWars wholesale, rather than having the company broken up and auctioned off piecemeal, as the latter course could potentially have allowed some of those pieces to end up back in the hands of Alex Jones' cronies.

Like, yes, it is in fact very funny that InfoWars is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Clickhole, but the real props go out to the Sandy Hook families who saw the opportunity and willingly gave up the additional millions of dollars that could have been realised by stripping InfoWars for parts in order to make that happen.

Autumn Along Meadow Run

Instagram | Cohost

imagination (1963) - harold ordway rugg

"chekhovs cat / schrödingers razor / occams gun"

Chekov's Cat: if you see a cat in the first act, it will probably be relevant later. (example: Alien)

Shrodinger's razor: an unopened box may or may not contain the solution to the story; there's no way to know without opening it. (example: Monk)

Occam's gun: the simplest way to kill off a character is to shoot them. (example: Bambi)

i have been cracking up at this for the past 3 minutes

Chekov's Box: If there is a container introduced in the opening act, it will be opened later.

Schrodinger's Gun: Treat every gun as if it's loaded unless you've checked it yourself.

Occam's Cat: If you hear strange noises at night, it's probably a cat.

if you'd like to watch something but everything feels too much, here is a 24/7 puppy livestream provided by the finnish national broadcaster. the bordercollie puppies are now 11 days old. the livestream will continue for eight weeks in total. this is an annual event and super popular in finland but you can watch it from abroad as well! the puppies will get names on sunday this week.

The puppies have names now! ☺️ They are Tuike (twinkle), Säde (beam), Välke (sparkle), Kipinä (spark), Salama (lightning bolt), Rusko (glow at twilight and dawn), Hämy (twilight), Pilke (glint), Kulo (burning dry grass) and Tähti (star) ☺️

If you're trans and you don't have a passport, get one. right now. not in a month, not in a week, get started on it today.

I mean it.

Today.

This is the one thing that I would definitely do regardless of state. For those not in the know, a passport is the way to get an easy name or gender marker change onto your ID without a court battle, and that is highly dependent on the Federal administration.

hi hello I did not know this at all; could you please elaborate?

At present, gender marker doesn't have to be related to your birth identification documents' gender marker at all.

For name change, you can follow these requirements to change your name without a court order.

The requirements are likely to change after the inauguration, so get your submission postmarked ASAP if you plan to update your documents.

— Gandalf, The Last Debate

Daily "avoiding hopelessness" checklist

Hey, friends. I know I've been really struggling to look towards the future with any kind of hope, so here are some little things I've been trying to do every day that might help you, too.

Love you all <3

I would like to announce that I was today years old when I realised that the 'LaCE' everyone in this goddamn fandom refers to with regard to complying with is actually more of a "how to get along with locals" chapter of a tour guide and not, as I had assumed until five minutes ago, elf kama sutra.

'Then the maiden turned to him and smiled, and she said: "Who are you? And why do you call me by that name?"

I'm already seeing advice from people in the US to purchase queer books and other banned or "controversial" books on paper as a way to combat the wave of government censorship that is coming. While this is a good idea (it is! absolutely!), it's not accessible to everyone, and truly, we're not going to be able to consumerism our way out of this one.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

The books are still available. Borrowing them from your library and returning them on time and in good condition will help keep them that way.