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Happy 200th birthday (Hiram) Ulysses S. Grant (April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885), Commanding General of the U.S. Army during the American Civil War and 18th President of the United States.

“On April 27, 1822… delivered by a stern-faced, bearded abolitionist, Dr. John Rogers, the plump baby weighed in at ten and three-quarters pounds, with reddish-brown hair and blue-gray eyes.” -Ron Chernow, Grant

“What a man he is! what a history! what an illustration—his life—of the capacities of that American individuality common to us all… He proves how an average western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried by tides of circumstances, perhaps caprices, into a position of incredible military or civil responsibilities… may steer his way fitly and steadily through them all, carrying the country and himself with credit year after year… Seems to me it transcends Plutarch. How those old Greeks, indeed, would have seized on him! … Nothing heroic, as the authorities put it—and yet the greatest hero. The gods, the destinies, seem to have concentrated upon him.” -Walt Whitman, 1879

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guy who makes a spreadsheet to figure out if his crush likes him back

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Looked through the "Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art" (1906) on Gutenberg and found some cute drawings.

When all you want to be in life is the "Heraldic Pelican in her piety" but you are "The Natural Pelican" :(

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Really fucking sad. No words.

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I must not kill myself killing myself is the myself killer . Dune

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my friends are so cringe. with their “feelings” and such.

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i know i reblogged that quote from the letter from a birmingham jail last night but I think that reading the whole thing is a worthwhile thing to do every so often. there are a lot of similarities between the contents of the letter and modern protests, including the disavowal of even nonviolent protests by institutional figures. it is also a very good piece of rhetoric, a response to a public disavowal of mlk by a group of religious leaders. it is written as though in response to them, using religious arguments, that they ought to find hard to ignore, but it was also designed with a wider audience in mind, specifically a lot is designed to make other white moderates reconsider their stance.

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a study of physical intimacy within the terror // lonely - son lux

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ONE HOUR AGO: "i would imagine there is a very high likelihood i will be fired today." indiana university's associate dean for graduate education spoke out against the university's allowance of a violent police response (including snipers stationed on a rooftop) to students' gaza solidarity encampment

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If you’re in DC, stop by the GWU University Yard and show them some love. The encamped students are remaining under threat of suspension

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A poet is what he is in himself. Gertrude Stein used to distinguish between a person who is an 'entity' and one who has an 'identity.' A significant man is an entity. Identity is what they give you socially. Your little dog recognizes you and therefore you have an identity. An entity, by contrast, an impersonal power, can be a frightening thing. It's as T. S. Eliot said of William Blake. A man like Tennyson was merged into his environment or encrusted with parasitic opinion, but Blake was naked and saw man naked, and from the center of his own crystal. There was nothing of the 'superior person' about him, and this made him terrifying. That is an entity. An identity is easier on itself. An identity pours a drink, lights a cigarette, seeks its human pleasures, and shuns rigorous conditions. The temptation to lie down is very great.

— Saul Bellow, from Humboldt’s Gift

pg., 311

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"I can fix him" "I can make him worse" OK well I can sit behind him and wrap my arms around his middle and comfortingly rock him side to side

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“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read,“ a third reader says, “but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern? Every time I seek to relive the emotion of a previous reading, I experience different and unexpected impressions, and do not find again those of before. At certain moments it seems to me that between one reading and the next there is a progression: in the sense, for example, of penetrating further into the spirit of the text, or of increasing my critical detachment. At other moments, on the contrary, I seem to retain the memory of the readings of a single book one next to another, enthusiastic or cold or hostile, scattered in time without a perspective, without a thread that ties them together. The conclusion I have reached is that reading is an operation without object; or that its true object is itself. The book is an accessory aid, or even a pretext.”

— Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

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Post Captain The Wool Garment Part III

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Mods, trick him into believing in a simpler past that never was

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