galmac

[galmac]

we were talking about the exhibition reviews we have to write for class and my classmate shared this as “the most delectably written review i’ve read lately” and im a lil tipsy and im Losing It

[galmac]

yes… YES… the paperback is OUT!! inside of this bad boy you can find some bonus character playlists, as well as, of course:

ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me,” but ominous

a rickroll, somewhere

a country crock margarine tub filled with teeth

a large gas station soda cup filled with teeth

a butch lesbian werewolf

a chronic illness support group discord chat

the power of friendship. it doesn’t fix things but it does makes everything worthwhile 

light stabbing

intimate head shaving

New Jersey’s hottest garage band, Big Little Fries

here’s the link again, xoxo etc etc - buying through Bookshop.org allows you to support your local independent bookseller!

[galmac]

There were many reasons why I stepped away from archaeology & academia just 16 months post-PhD but the one that still angers me most today has to be the ways in which the Institution™ categorizes folklore vs science when it comes to Indigenous people. Ancestral knowledge of the ‘Old World’ is seen as a form of early science—curiosity leading to rigorous study and eventual advancement—with their fairytales and folklore viewed as purposefully allegorical. The Indigenous people of Africa, Turtle Island, and the rest of the so-called Americas never got that same respect. Outside of a handful of tokenized and understudied societies, most Indigenous ancestral knowledge is viewed through the lens of folklore—and no grace is given to allegory or metaphor or philosophy, either. The assumption is that our people can only think in literal, concrete terms. And it’s fucking insulting. There’s this joke in academia that if archaeologists don’t know an artifact’s usage they’ll deem it as ‘ritualistic purposes’; and it’s funny or whatever but nine times out of ten those artifacts are from [insert literally any Turtle Island or Mesoamerican nation] and not from much-older Greek civilizations. But it’s not well-studied because we’re not well-respected, and therefore nobody bothered to ask our still-living people who are very much aware of what said artifact was meant for (spoiler alert: not ritualistic).

Early on in my first Master’s program I got into a huge fight with a white professor who wanted to use a widely misinterpreted SuPeRsTiTiOn from MY tribe as an example of a persistent folktale. The folktale being that: Chiricahua Apache women don’t take baths during pregnancy bc we think the water is evil. It is true that, after being moved onto the rez, birthing + postpartum women were becoming ill when they bathed. This isn’t some ancient happening stoked by mythology—this is 100 years ago to recent times; midwives saw it happening and acted by cautioning against bathing. My grandmother, an Indigenous midwife, saw it play out and is very hesitant to recommend bathing to birthing women on the rez today. This isn’t because she or any other Chiricahua thinks water is evil; it’s because water quality has been so horrific that it quite literally was infecting the womb at its most vulnerable time. Had this been a European society, this knowledge would be considered evidence-based but since we’re Indigenous, they slap some contrived faux folkways mythos onto it and call it superstitious.

This is just one example of what happens on a constant basis when it comes to communities who are being oppressed by the same systems that set the standards for what science, history, and art are.

It’s maddening and sickening to me to this day.

(Tangentially, the next time I see a non-ndn upload or reblog our artifacts and crafts and tag it as “primitive art”, I’m going to scalp you. You’ve been duly warned)

[galmac]

"Elevated horror" is becoming the new elitist fancypants industry term du jour I'm seeing all over the place so I wanna make it abundantly clear that I only write shit, I only write popular garbage and potboilers, and you're all just jealous of my jetpack.

[galmac]

You CAN do deep squats, my friend!

[galmac]

After having gone snow blind from looking at white houses all morning, I finally came across this beauty, built in 1905, in a refined Edwardian style with elements of the prior Arts and Crafts movement in London. It’s been carefully reno’d- cozy colorful, and a bit moody. 

Greeted by a black staircase with an attractive black & white runner. The walls are a sophisticated, moody deep green with black trim. 

Cozy and formal navy blue living room. But, there are whimsical touches, such as the pencil drawing over the fireplace.

A black dining room gets lots of light thru floor to ceiling windows and a door to the garden. Plus, a fireplace with a green tile hearth stands out.

Love this feature- windows open from the kitchen to the dining room. 

The kitchen is fabulous. Trendy forest green cabinetry and a pink ceiling with a built-in matching pink cabinet.

The kitchen opens to a breezeway that leads to the patio.

Another bit of fun on the stairs - a framed Dracula poster.

Upstairs is a tranquil deep green and black main bedroom. 

Beautifully updated bath with deep green subway tile and white mosaics.

A sophisticated nursery in deep blue and black with a stunning fireplace.

These beautiful stairs lead to the attic guest room.

The guest room has been remodeled with two big skylights and window seats, plus a sink.

Patio with stunning gardens.

Further back on the property is a wonderful greenhouse. 

https://inigo.com/

[galmac]

classic scifi novels by men r always like. page 1 here’s a cool scifi idea i had. page 2 i hate women so much it’s unreal

[galmac]

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

[galmac]

easy access

[galmac]

Brb replacing "I should" with "I have the option/opportunity to" in my internal monologue re: beating myself up over shit that needs doing. Let's see if that works.

[galmac]

Greek Mythology Book Adaptation Reviews

I’m going to review some Greek mythology adaptations I’ve read to either recommend the ones I enjoyed or warn you which to steer clear of.

But first, a quick word on accuracy. Most of these are going to have issues with the accuracy of character portrayals and or the story. It’s unfortunately inherent to this genre. I enjoy Greek mythology and homer because the characters are flawed and complex. So, I don’t know if authors make the changes they do because they think modern audiences want a cleaner cut good guys/protagonist vs bad guys/antagonist dynamic or what. Ultimately, I do think it does the characters a disservice to try and sort the characters into “good guy” and “bad guy” boxes. So, I will point out major inaccuracies, especially with Trojan War surrounding books bc while there are multiple versions of many Greek myths, the trojan war has most of the action solidified by homer, and you can then decide if it’s worth reading. A lot of what I like about these books will come down to writing style. We all know these stories and how they go, so it’s up to the author to write them in a way that is worth reading. Some of these books I vehemently disliked and some of them I love. This is mostly to just share my experiences with everyone. I know when I was looking into Greek mythology based works these were recommended as if they were all equal but in reading them that is definitely not the case.

Books discussed under the cut: Ariadne, Helen of Troy, Troy (by Stephen Fry), The Song of Kings, The Song of Achilles, Circe, Lore Olympus, The Penelopiad, and Ransom.

Keep reading

[galmac]

Let’s call it The Great Chaste Lie of the Plucky Heroine. “Oh, my, I’m not getting anything out of this fantasy of being buried deep within the bosom of shared manhood! I derive neither aesthetic nor sexual pleasure from the particular form of binding this fantasy requires, nor in adopting a masculine affect, nor from the thrill of being ‘discovered’ and punished, nor from the idea in being tutored and quizzed in the manly arts by a gruff, lantern-jawed paragon of masculinity! No, this is only to avoid detection/find an outlet for my period-inappropriate determination/prove that I’m not like other girls. Purely opportunistic, nothing erotically charged about our big-brother-little-brother, Mister-I’ll-make-a-man-out-of-you vibe, no sirree.”

Let’s start with THE CORINTHIAN, one of Heyer’s earlier Regencies, before she’d quite locked into the formula – swaggering dandy Richard Wyndham spots Penn Creed (aka Penelope) climbing out of her family home down a rope-ladder during his drunken stumble home; the two of them start traveling together so she can avoid a forced marriage as he poses variously as Penn’s uncle, cousin, and tutor.

At the end of the book, Penn’s taken off in the middle of the night, convinced Sir Richard only proposed out of a sense of guilt (You’re wrong, Penn!), forcing Sir Richard to chase after his ward/nephew/cousin and tear him out of a carriage. It’s got every element necessary to the force-masc fantasy: tons of reminders about Sir Richard’s cis massiveness, power, stateliness, address, and competence that alternately threatens, overshadows, envelops, commingles, and eats Penn’s squishy, trans-adjacent, conditional boyishness, running away from school, male sulkiness versus male authority, man-on-boy bullying, more than a hint of open homosexuality that’s not only condoned but demanded by polite society – the people in the carriage don’t just encourage Richard to “recover” Penn, most of them insist on it.

...

There is no force-masc fantasy more powerful than this! The straightest, hottest guy in the world, God’s own quarterback, doesn’t care that it looks gay when he’s kissing you. Go straight to jail, do not collect $200, it’s all over but the shouting, it’s Chinatown baby, this is it.

[galmac]

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

[galmac]

[galmac]

Me: oh yeah, if you think school photography is hard now, try imagining doing this with film.

The new girl: what’s film?

Me: … film. Like… film that goes in a film camera.

New girl: what’s that mean?

Me: … before cameras were digital.

New girl: how did you do it before digital?

Me:… with film? I haven’t had enough coffee for this conversation