Throw It On The Pile

[ID: a very simply drawn three panel comic. the first panel shows a person approaching a cat that's laying on the floor and reaching down to hug her, saying "gertie." the second panel shows two coins falling from the person's shirt pocket. the third panel shows the coins bouncing off the cat, who doesn't care.]

my most strongly-held Touhou Opinion is: if you sat byakuren hijiri down with literally any buddhist from the outside world, they would have no idea what the fuck she's on about

girl was heterodox at best before getting sealed in Makai with nothing but devils and her own thoughts for company for like a thousand years. she has theological stances that could make someone's head explode

Fire powers character should be wearing heavy coats and scarves because they like the heat, Ice powers character should dress skimpy because they like the cold POST

Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (HAL Laboratory - SNES - 1997) 

Just finished reading Babel and one thing that really struck me during it (amidst Everything Else That Happened) was how much more expressive and just… happier Kal’tsit seemed compared to how we currently know her. It really felt like Theresa’s death just destroyed her emotionally and realizing that hit me hard.

From, "haha, Kal'tsit is our ex-wife" to "we broke our eldest daughter's heart and even we hate ourselves for it".

blankie mode redux.

Doctor with several of his closest operators 😸

on the one hand, yeah, sure, if you say so, on the other hand, this is just some person asking for money over the phone, like what exactly did you expect? Sure, give us your bank details? Obviously, they asked if the person she is asking money for (which is also weird) is a member of their congregation. You can imagine them just looking for ways to get out of paying (which they are not obliged to in the first place) or you can think they wanted to know what is actually up.

loving the tag of "christianity" btw, I am sure the local muslim or hindu community went out of their way to help the outgroups, right?

Says something that it never even occurs to them to seek help from those groups because unlike with their little "Gotcha" game they already know what the answer will be without asking.

Not sure "I've had the exact same opinions since I was a six-year-old" is the flex you think it is.

This post has everything

>#ThatHappened

>seewhatimean.jpeg

>hot topic slogans

Truly the post of all time

Sheer projection, really. Because anyone who says "I believe the government should tax rich people more and help those less fortunate" is someone who wants the veneer of morality while having the goal of doing absolutely nothing to help.

Calling random churches to ask for money and then shaming them for not just giving you money to allegedly help someone you won’t help yourself is how you pretend you have the moral high ground.

Also note how, if this actually happened, the bill wasn't paid for by the government either. It was done by...survey says...individual charity! Which is the exact opposite of a dunk against charity.

The church does charity by performing services like feeding the hungry or tending to the sick with the help of donations they receive from their congregation

This would be like going to doctors without borders and being like “hey, can you help us with the light bill?”

Like in terms of funds they rely on charity too, you dumbass

one of the things that came to mind after i posted this was how many churches I've been to where they have a perpetual roof repair fund.

because any church that doesn't have a rich congregation is having to scrounge up money to pay for one thing or another. Donations to the church go a lot to maintaining the building and grounds because, yanno. a church has no source of income but what people donate.

so really this very much is going to your local donation-fed soup kitchen and going 'give me money to pay my water bill!' and being pissy when they say no.

Just a few more hours

they're burning ballots in the US now btw. in case you wanted to know where things are at.

Edit: to clarify, locations mentioned are Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon. This news story does not involve Canada.

This has happened in Arizona too, at this point I would say if it's possible your best bet is to drop off your ballot either inside a polling place or a post office, outdoor drop boxes aren't 100% safe. If you've already mailed yours you should be able to use your county recorder's office's website or another .gov site to track your ballot and make sure it arrives and is counted, but if not yeah inside the post office or polling location is your best bet. Absolutely ridiculous that things have come to this but the right sure is using Stochastic Terrorism as their main campaign strategy at this point and we gotta work around it.

You know, knowing about as much about those cities as I do, I kinda... sit here a bit stunned that people think this is right wing activitiies?

Like, Arizona I believe right wingers might be doing things, but you're telling me PORTLANDIA is a bastion of right wing control where the votes being destroyed would be left-wing?

Please. Do take a moment and consider the events and remember that bad actors can exist on, yanno, the side actively in control of said major cities.

Washington State and California both have large conservative bases in the rural regions outside the city centers, and they have been known to drive into said cities to cause trouble.

I did not know that last part, thank you for that love. But it still leaves the whole 'how did out of town conservatives from rural regions come into the possession of ballot boxes without any reports of a break-in.'

Because Ballot boxes stolen would have been a story leading into this.

If they're only found burning, it's an inside job and one has to look at the people IN the area who had access to those boxes. Thus my response. But if we have reports of break-ins to go with this, that leans the other way.

Ballot Drop Boxes are not ballot boxes.

Ballot drop boxes are large mail boxes put up on street corners specifically for ballots.

Thank you again love! Apparently this is... maybe just a west coast thing? We seriously don't have them where I live, and I'd never heard of them before at all!

This, of course, explains why it's likely to be seen as an outside attack by assholes who want to rob people of their vote. Because it's FAR more likely to be outsiders targeting democrat run cities than democrats targeting opposition votes.

I'm glad to spread correct information at last.

So, latest update on the arson attempts, looks like one of the suspects was a habitual jailbird looking to get some time back in prison, very literally, while the others were part of a pro-palestine group's efforts?

there’s a very insidious form of racism in the western left when people act like fascists in nonwhite or nonwestern countries shouldn’t be held to the same standard y’all hold fascists in the US and europe

fascist theocratic regime supporters are just as bad in the middle east or elsewhere as they are in the west and you not wanting to call that shit out is just that type of racism where you think nonwhite people can do no wrong, it’s infantilizing and gross

"The Taliban aren't that bad!"

THE TALIBAN SHOT MALALA FOR THE HEINOUS CRIME OF BEING A GIRL GOING TO SCHOOL BECKY!!!! THEY ARE FASCISTS!!!!

No they're not. They're Islamic theocrats. Get it right. Fascism is a particular system of government from a particular time, not some catchall term for "evil."

There's much more than just one oppressive system of government, and calling all of it one thing lets certain other authoritarians slip by our defenses (cough cough fucking communists) and they in fact have been encouraging that mislabeling for that purpose.

Funnily enough OP is committing the "weird racism" themselves by using the term Fascism. Islamic theocracies have existed for a very long time, using a purely western term like Fascism which was born, existed and died in Europe just feels a bit... dismissive of other cultures.

Yup. Predates it by centuries as well.

But if you don't make the name of a heretical sect of your political doctrine a byword for evil, your job as a commie bastard is so much harder!

The Western left also uses "fascist" as a racial slur - usually towards Jews, Hindus, and Cubans.

The thing is, and this really is important to note? To the left wing, 'fascist' has become a catch-all term for any form of authority they dislike.

And you can argue that's not actually true, but bitch the fact that there are people doing studies into 'ur-fascist' movements (aka: any form of government that existed before Fascism was coined) is a very wild display that fascism is a catch-all term.

It's alsy why the studies on Fascism refuse to use the fascists own standards on what makes someone a fascist, and instead made up their own fucking checklists on fascism (that they also check a fuckton of those same marks)

One of the best things that ever happened to me was during my trip to Venice 5 years ago. I had bought an all-inclusive ticket for all museums and exhibitions in the Piazza, and I was going through an exhibition of statuettes when I entered the next wing with paintings. The styles seemed somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t work out what was happening. Thankfully this incredible lady working at the exhibition saw that I was a bit confused and approached me to ask if I knew what this exhibition was. I said no, just that it had seemed interesting.

She explained that the reason why I might be confused is that I had entered the exhibition of Wolfgang Beltracchi from the end rather than the beginning. She then took me to the start and started explaining about him and his history. He has art forgeries in every style from medieval paintings to modern art and his forgery is not copying existing paintings but creating “lost paintings” that the artist might have painted or talked about painting but never did. He perfectly matched the artist style, composition, ideas, colours and medium. His materials were historically accurate and experts couldn’t determine that they were fakes.

And his wife Helene Beltracchi was incredible. She helped “backdate” paintings and provide evidence of their age. One of the things that stuck with me the most is this black and white photo, created with an old-time camera  and medium and the photo itself was aged so carbon-dating couldn’t discover that it was a modern photo. It was of Helene, with her features slightly altered, dressed in an old-time, era appropriate dress with the painting in the background. can you imagine the level of dedication and the immense attention to detail required to so convincingly fake a photo to provide a reliable history of this painting existing for centuries? She helped him create fake history for a lot of his paintings.

I’ll never forget that exhibition. There were so many paintings, all of them in the styles of different artists, most of them verified by experts as genuine until his mistake with the white paint which prompted a much, much deeper examination by experts. I think the lady mentioned that they could still not forensically confirm that some paintings were fakes, but it’s been a while, I might be misremembering. I was just struck with awe at the sheer knowledge they must have of multitude of painters, not just their styles, but their lives and the way their minds worked. He painted scenes “they might have painted” and when you look at them, you could definitely see it. It hits especially hard when you have more than passing familiarity with the artist, their lives and struggles, their choices of mediums and themes. You can look at this painting and think, this is definitely created by []. It makes so much sense, it has that distinct flair and works incredibly well as a parallel to [], their earlier painting. It was indescribable. Can you imagine the skill required to back that knowledge up? To be able to perfectly mimic the styles of so many artists and be able to so accurately forge paints, brushes and canvas that experts verified them as genuine?

And he had his own original paintings as well. One of them struck a chord with me especially. It was a painting of storage rooms, storing thousands and thousands of paintings that the public doesn’t know of, because they’re the unpopular paintings, the paintings that never get exhibited, the forgotten paintings. I thought it was very poignant.

I love these people. They really did do it because they loved art, they loved playing around with art forensics, and they just had a blast. Seeing his gallery brought be such incredible joy and so many interesting things to think about. 10/10, would definitely recommend

I gotta settle a debate between me and two of my siblings:

If you have enough music to get any utility out of one playlist with everything in it, you don't actually like music, you just need a substitute for your lack of an inner monologue.

False. I put on music without lyrics so I can concentrate without being distracted by noise or tinnitus.

Also, playlist of everything by a given artist on shuffle, or a given album, or a playlist of a certain genre.

thank fucking god I'm not 14 anymore

hey if you are 14-17 It does get better you are just in your caterpillar goop era

Also sometimes the goop era lasts a little longer than other people's goop

Reporting in just 6 weeks shy of 50 years-old: You will re-goop several times in your life, often emerging with different wings and maybe even different skills. You're gonna be okay.

Fuck I needed to hear this today.

There's many goops but things do generally get better with each goopening. Especially that first one.

not now sweetie, mommy is watching how the massive girlbossification of female characters has led to the belief that weak and vulnerable female characters are badly written characters because apparently every woman needs to be outspoken and witty and snarky and brave in order to be considered “complex” and have any value in a piece of media!!