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Susan Stillman, Red Door, 2017, Acrylic on canvas

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Untitled - Thomas Hartmann , 2023.

German, b. 1950 -

Oil on canvas , 150 x 140 cm.

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Masao Yamamoto’s Fujisan (via here)

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Shadow Song  -     Charlotte Sorapure

British, b. 1968 -

Oil on gesso panel, 94 x 66 cm.

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These notes from @dawnssummers made me think of the Jan Levinson quote from The Office about “dating Michael Scott publicly and collapsing in on myself like a dying star.” Like if she lowered herself to being with a formerly evil, currently neutered, soulless creature & even he left her, which of course he would because they always do, she just wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Plus these excellent notes from @147days. Poor Buffy just doesn’t believe there is any other outcome than him eventually leaving her because everyone has, including her dad & Giles on top of Angel & Riley.

Whoa I’d forgotten about this parallel until I was browsing the s3 transcripts today:

3x20 The Prom

BUFFY: I’ll never have a normal life. 

ANGEL: Right, you’ll always be a Slayer. But that’s all the more reason why you should have a real relationship instead of this, this freak show…I didn’t mean that. 

BUFFY: I’m gonna go. 

6x10 Wrecked:

SPIKE: I just don’t see why you have to run off so quick. Thought we could…

BUFFY: Not gonna happen. Last night was the end of this freak show.

SPIKE: Don’t say that.

Marti Noxon wrote both so either she happens to repeat herself, or she was calling back to it. I hope it’s the latter, cuz dang it’s a telling character moment if so. (a) That phrase would have to have been stuck in Buffy’s mind for years, in what couldn’t have been a good way, (b) she’s deliberately deploying it against Spike because she knows it hurts, but © is also probably primarily deploying it against herself, because she’s the only one that knows the reference.

“Freak” is a really pointed word, honestly. I’m thinking about how Buffy uses it in Life Serial too, when she calls herself “freak Buffy, too strong for construction work.” It aligns her with the monsters and creatures that normally she kills. With the weird and scary and unnatural. Which is how she feels this season, really. Like she’s wrong and inhuman and unable to cope with normal life. So to call back to a moment when she was sort of shocked into seeing her life (and her love life) as not just “not normal” but actually freaky, is very fitting.

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Vintage Japanese dog diorama PNGs. 

(1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.)

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Alexander Rodchenko, 1920s

more

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Clown illustrations by Lowell Herrero (1971) PNGs.

(source: peculiarmanicule)

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Back  - Jeff Olsson , 2020.

Swedish , b. 1981 -

Charcoal on paper , 73 x 56 cm.

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This goes for “experts” on every topic. Science, war, health policy, etc. “expert opinions” are all just propaganda in the guise of overly complicated explanations to make you feel smart for agreeing with them.

I'm up to the "I dunno maybe children working 13 hour shifts is bad, guys" part of Capital and it feels important to inform people that haven't read it yet that capitalists in the 19th century were not by any means wringing their hands and twirling their mustaches about employing children to squeeze out profits, they were hiring "experts" to write newspaper articles for them, explaining how "well, the socialists have these big demands about an 8-hour work day, and taking Saturdays off, but it's actually just so complicated, it's too complicated for most people to understand, we just NEED to hire children for night shifts because the stamina of their strong, youthful bodies is the only way we can survive as a business! It's science, you see. Economics doesn't work like that, just ask our economics professors at Oxford. You CAN'T turn a profit only working people 8 hours! Trust the experts, they know. It's just so complicated..."

That exact infuriating cadence that you read in New York Times articles, in the Atlantic Monthly, in the WaPo and all the other bourgeois rags where "everything is so complicated, and it's actually a lot more complicated than you think.." that has been around since the beginning. It is nothing new. So the next time you see some op-ed from Matt Yglesias or any of those other guys huffing their own farts about how "complicated" everything is, and how "unrealistic" a 30-hour work week is, remember that Marx was dealing with that exact class of "intellectuals" "explaining" how working 13 hours at age 10 was "vital" to the "moral fibre" of those poor kids.

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Poppies - Ronald Soeliman

Dutch, b. 1965 -

Oil , 120 x 80 cm..

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by mori_keke

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Views of the sun from three planets. The Physical Sciences. Revised Edition. 1950. 

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Why does this picture feel like sunrise not sunset?

 Lookout  - Keita Morimoto , 2017 .

Japanese , b. 1990 -

Oil on panel , 16 x 20 in.

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i'm always fascinated when female travel vloggers review a place in asia, africa, the middle east, or latin america and say something to the effect of "the men here can be quite aggressive in pursuing you, so if you're female don't travel solo" and the comments are full of scolding from other women saying "that's racist."

yet when these same vloggers visit white nations (namely russia or anywhere in eastern or southern europe) and also mention how aggressive/scary/misogynistic the men there are, there's no anxiety in the comments about defending these white men.

it's just another example of how women believe not holding "men of color" accountable for misogyny (or even infantilizing them) is somehow good leftist or feminist praxis. we need to unlearn that shit.

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Morning Glow -    Kenneth Pils , 2022.

Swedish , b. 1964  -

Acryliv on canvas , 80 x 110 cm