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Strange wings that didn’t stir the air.

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"New Yorkers bite more people than sharks annually" is an excellent example of how statistics can be misleading. Like yeah no shit, do you have any idea how rare it is to even encounter a shark in the wild? They're not exactly urban animals. I'm pretty damn sure that if sharks were living in big cities like pigeons, just strolling down the streets looking for food scraps, you'd see a lot more news stories about New Yorkers biting them.

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Waking up from your decade long enchanted sleep to learn that, not only is sharing your True Name with the fae okay now, but there's actually a rule against using a false name when entering the faerie market.

Your friends admit that this causes some problems— it's way easier to fall victim to a false deal, or get stolen away now— but everyone goes to the fae market to buy their goods so what are you gonna do? Not see your friends? Go out of your way to buy more expensive stuff from the human market? Yeah right.

Also yes they still perform their light-footed fluttering dances under the silvery light of the full moon, but in order to get in you have to first watch the dancers perform two short plays about why you should shop at certain local businesses. Also if you want to talk about the performance afterwards then you need to trade them your True Name, your home address, your date of birth and your personal interests.

You do this so that the fae can this information on a scroll and give it to local business owners.

Another part of the deal they broke is that nobody may talk negatively about those businesses within the market walls. In fact, your friends say, the enchantment is so effective that it's very difficult to talk negatively about anything at all.

“I know it sounds un-good,” your friend admits. “But there are loopholes.”

“In retrospect,” another friend says, “I wish the town had voted un-yes to teaching the fae about money.”

“On the plus side,” the first friend says, “I hear the market is investing in one of those enchanted statues that responds to questions with deliberately ambiguous riddles, so long as you trade it your memories of secondary school.”

“Oh, cool. Is that why they're burning down the library?”

You wonder if it's too late to go back to sleep.

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tumblr users love reading. you literally stopped for this post just because it has words in it

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I saw a sign at a nearby village advertising a "veillée", a storytelling evening, which sounded intriguing, so I went out of curiosity—it turned out to be an old lady who had arranged a circle of chairs in her garden and prepared drinks, and who wanted to tell folk tales and stories from her youth. Apparently she was telling someone at the market the other day that she missed the ritual of the "veillée" from pre-television days, when people would gather in the evening and tell stories, and the people she was talking to were like, well let's do a veillée! And then she put up the sign.

About 15 people came, and she sat down and started telling us stories—I loved the way she made everything sound like it had happened just yesterday and she was there, even tales she'd got from her grandmother, and the way she continually assumed we knew all the people she mentioned, and everyone spontaneously played along; she'd be like "And Martin, the bonesetter—you know Martin," (everyone nods—of course, Martin) "We never liked him much" and everyone nodded harder, our collective distaste for Martin now a shared cultural heritage of our tiny microcosm. She started with telling us the story of the communal bread oven in the village. The original oven was destroyed during the Revolution; people used to pay to use the local aristocrat's oven, but of course around 1789 both the aristocrat and his oven were disposed of in a glorious blaze of liberty, equality, and complete lack of foresight.

Then the villagers felt really daft for having destroyed a perfectly serviceable oven that they could have now started using for free. "But you know what things were like during the revolution." (Everyone nodded sagely—who among us hasn't demolished our one and only source of bread-baking equipment in a fit of revolutionary zeal?)

The village didn't have a bread oven for decades, people travelled to another village to make bread; and then in the 19th century the village council finally voted to build a new oven. It was a communal endeavour, everyone pitched in with some stones or tools or labour, and the oven was built—but it collapsed immediately after the construction was finished. Consternation. Not to be deterred, people re-built the oven, with even more effort and care—and the second one also collapsed.

People realised that something was amiss, and the village council convened. After a lot of serious discussion, during which no one so much as mentioned the possibility of a structural flaw, people reached the only logical conclusion: the drac had sabotaged their oven. Twice. (The drac, in these parts, is the son of the devil.) The logic here, I suppose, was that no one but the devil's own child would dare to stand between French people and their bread.

The next step was even more obvious: they passed around a hat to raise money, assuming the devil’s son was after a cash donation. But (and I'm skipping a few twists and turns of the story here) the son of the devil did not want money, he wanted half of every batch of bread, for as long as the village oven stood. Consternation.

People simply could not afford to give away half of their bread, and were about to abandon the idea of having their own oven altogether—but then Saint Peter came to the rescue. (In case you didn't know, Saint Peter happens to regularly visit this one tiny village in the French countryside to check that its inhabitants are doing okay and are not encountering oven issues.) Saint Peter reminded them of one precious piece of information they had overlooked: holy water burns the devil.

People re-built the oven, for the third time. The son of the devil returned, to destroy it and/or claim his half of the first batch—but on that day, the villagers had organised a grand communal spring cleaning, dousing every street and alley in the village with copious amounts of holy water. The poor drac simply could not access the oven; every possible path scorched his feet for reasons he couldn't quite explain. So he was standing there, smouldering gently and wondering what was going on, when some passing tramp seemed to take pity on him, pointed at his satchel and told him to turn himself into a rat and jump in there, and the tramp would carry him where he wished to go. The devil's son, probably a bit frazzled at this point, agreed without much thought, became a rat and jumped in the satchel, and of course that's the point when everyone in the village sprang from the shadows, wielding sticks, shovels, pans, and started beating the devil's son senseless. (Old lady, calmly: "You could hear his bones crack.") So the son of Satan slithered back to Hell and never returned to destroy the village oven again—and the spring cleaning tradition endured; the streets were washed with holy water once a year after that, both to commemorate this glorious day of civic resistance when the village absolutely bodied the devil's offspring and to maintain basic oven safety standards. (Old lady: "But we don't bother anymore… That's too bad.")

She told us five stories, most of them artfully blending actual local events or anecdotes from her youth with folk tale elements, it was so delightful. She thanked us for coming and said she'd love to do this again sometime. I went home reflecting that listening to an old lady happily tell stories of dubious historical veracity involving the Revolution, property damage, demonic mischief and baffling municipal decision-making is literally my ideal Saturday night activity.

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Jim Musil (American, b.1976)

"Tidal Wetlands," 2025

Acrylic, 16 x 16 in

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i pray the tomb is shut forever

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Nanna nanna…

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Andrew Kane

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Hello! Would you like to annoy an asshole Republican U.S. House Representative? Because in addition to not allowing one of my relatives to unsubscribe from his little propaganda newsletters, he doesn't know how to lock down a survey:

Go ahead and vote! You don't need to submit an email address :)

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There’s a lot of excellent examples of the difference between a million and a billion, but here’s my new personal favorite from a conversation I had today:

A million minutes ago was April 2021, the height of the COVID pandemic.

A billion minutes ago was November 121 CE, the height of the Roman Empire.

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If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

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ATTENTION XENA FANS!!!

We are just 2 months away from the THIRTY YEAR ANNIVERSARY of our beloved TV show 🤯

In order to celebrate this HUGE milestone, I am proposing an official XENA FAN WEEK. I know that our fandom is alive and well after all this time, so let's prove it!

Let's put out as much new art and community engagement as we can! 📢📢📢

Xena Fan Week will begin the same day that the very first episode aired: September 4th, and then continue for a full 7 days. Save the date NOW and start making those gifs, fics, and art pieces!

Please share this post and tag all of your fellow Xena fans. We are one of the longest running fandoms on the internet, and now is our time to prove that we are still alive and well!

LETS GO XENA FANS!

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agriculture is basically an infinite materials hack