kingsgrave:

skolita:

shiraglassman:

jhameia:

kakapokitty:

kawaikunaii:

knockingghosts:

myartmoods:

The Hesitant Betrothed by Auguste Toulmouche (1866)

I have always adored this painting. Having the central female figure stare with awareness at her viewer is a very powerful move, and something not often given to women in paintings. It creates an engagement with the viewer, she sees you and she knows you are watching her. She is no longer an object in an image, she is a person.

You know she gon’ kill the man she has to marry

I like how everyone else is totally excited the women are congratulating her, the little girl is so into being a flower girl.

And she’s there in middle going “THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT.”

“the hesitant betrothed” there is NOTHING HESITANT about that expression

Whoa. This is really dramatic and unexpected 🙂
The “Fuck This Shit” Betrothed

This is the ‘Isn’t It A Tragedy She Was Widowed So Young’ Betrothed, is what it is.

princessnijireiki:

angelbabyspice:

postmarxed:

postmarxed:

Cool there’s been asbestos in Johnson & Johnson baby powder this whole time and they have been aware of it for decades and done nothing

@laeffy yeah you uh. Need to stop doing that immediately and maybe go to the doctor to make sure you don’t have mesothelioma

this is so fucking sick

FYI, this applies to talc & talc-based powders / body products in general— J&J knew about this for decades because talc & asbestos occur together naturally (the minerals literally grow together in nature, have similar compositions, and are / were mined together), and they’re difficult to cleanly filter out from each other.

It’s old knowledge that, unless you’re involved in mining, mineralogy, or occupational health & safety, has been deliberately buried from both the public’s and regulators’ knowledge.

CNBC’s article + their writeup on the Reuters report revealing J&J’s cover-ups go into more detail on their corporate liability and the impact of J&J’s products specifically…

…But I cannot overstate that people’s best option right now is to look for products in general that do not contain talc at all, regardless of the manufacturer, and to be vigilant in seeking appropriate healthcare (and/or legal action if required) if symptoms arise.

This goes for body use (diaper powder, chafing powder— this is where the cases of ovarian cancer are coming from), for any use where powder may be inhaled (hair, face), or will have prolonged exposure to mucus membranes (eye makeup, bath bombs, etc.).

J&J are not the only ones who have covered this data up, and companies that aren’t sued will absolutely continue to do so. Be safe & be vigilant.

Aw yeah it’s time for cookies with neural networks

lewisandquark:

So there’s these computer programs called artificial neural networks that are good at imitating things. By seeing examples of what humans did, they can learn to translate languages, predict product sales, and even categorize text and images as innocuous or explicit (it has a lot of trouble with this last task, as it turns out).

One neural network I use, called textgenrnn, tries its best to imitate any kind of text you give it. I’ve given them paint colors, band names, and even guinea pig names and in each case their results are somewhat… mixed. (Paint colors called Stanky Bean, Stargoon, and Turdly, for example) The problem is that it doesn’t know what any of these words mean – it’s just picking letter combinations that seem likely to it.

This is what happened when I gave it all the cookies from a list of American recipes. This is what human cookies sound like to a neural network.

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Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go whip up a batch of Fluffin Coffee Drops.

For more cookies, including the neural net’s strange obsession with “balls,” as well as bonus material every time I post, you can sign up here.

Want to help with a future project? I’m crowdsourcing a dataset of college essay prompts. Let’s see if a neural net can write some that are more interesting than the usual!

loveismyrevolution:

detenebrate:

0xymoronic:

shitarianasays:

theeyesinthenight:

the-sonic-screw:

platinumpixels:

volpesvolpes:

unseilie:

sarahvonkrolock:

gaysexagainstawall:

them-days-was-olden-as-fuck:

The spread of the black death.

Poland

Poland, tell us your secret.

Poland is the old new Madagascar. 

If I remember correctly, Poland’s secret is that the jews where being blamed all over europe (as usual) as scapegoats for the black plague. Poland was the only place that accepted Jewish refugees, so pretty much all of them moved there. 

Now, one of the major causes of getting the plague was poor hygiene. This proved very effective for the plague because everyone threw their poop into the streets because there were no sewers, and literally no one bathed because it was against their religion. Unless they were jewish, who actually bathed relatively often. When all the jews moved to Poland, they brought bathing with them, and so the plague had little effect there.

Milan survived by quarantining its city and burning down the house of anyone showing early symptoms, with the entire family inside it. 

I reblogged this tons of times, but the Milan info is new.

Damn Italy, you scary.

Poland: “Hey, feeling a bit down? Have a quick wash! There, you see? All better”

Milan:Aw, feeling a bit sick are we? BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN!!!!!”

Also, this might have something to do with it: from what I understand, O blood type is uncommonly… common in Poland. Something to do with large families in small villages and a LOT of intermarriage. The black plague was caused by a bacterium that produced, in its waste in the human body, wastes that very closely mimic the “B” marker sugars on red blood cells that keep the body from attacking its own immune system. Anyone who has a B blood type had an immune system that was naturally desensitized to the presence of the bacterium, and therefore was more prone to developing the disease. Anyone who had an O type was doubly lucky because the O blood type means the total absence of ANY markers, A or B, meaning that their bodys’ immune system would react quickly and violently against the invaders, while someone with an A may show symptoms and recover more slowly, while someone with B would have just died. Because O is a recessive blood type, it shows in higher numbers when more people who carry the recessive genes marry other people who also carry the recessive gene. Poland, which has a nearly 700 year history of being conquered by or partnering with every other nation in the surrounding area, was primarily an agricultural country, focused around smaller, farming communities where people were legally tied to, and required to work, “their” land, and so historically never “spread” their genes across a large area. The economy was, and had been, unstable for a very long period of time leading up to the plague, the government had been ineffective and had very little reach in comparison to the armies of the other countries around for a very very long time, and so its people largely remained in small communities where multiple generations of cross-familial inbreeding could have allowed for this more recessive gene to show up more frequently. Thus, there could be a higher percentage of O blood types in any region of the country, guaranteeing less spread of the illness and moving slower when it did manage to travel. Combine this with the fact that there were very few large, urban centers where the disease would thrive, and with the above facts, and you’ve got a lovely recipe for avoiding the plague.

Interestingly enough, as a result from the plague, the entirety of Europe now has a higher percentage of people with O blood type than any other region of the world. 

WHY IS THIS ALL SO COOL

When Tumblr teaches you more about the plague than 12 years of school ever did.

Just to throw a nod in, as a medieval historian, this is all credible, and is the leading theory as to the plagues effectiveness at this point. So. Enjoy your new knowledge!

Wow. This is cool knowledge!