#people on the photo

[theownerofsich]

Back streets of Glasgow,Scotland 1868

[eastgaysian]

[ionomycin]

Grief

ref photo by @jawsstone

[wiisagi-maiingan]

You are allowed to exist alone in public btw. You're allowed to go to the movies alone and go out to eat alone and hang out in a park alone and go for a walk alone and whatever else. It isn't weird or creepy, it doesn't make you lonely or a loser or whatever. You are allowed to just exist as yourself.

[alexanderpearce]

whag if i want to (macquarie harbour july 23)

eta the maugean skate is extremely endangered and facing immediate extinction and the government is the damn fucking liberals and they will not do anything about it. idk what any random people from across the world can do about it but im screaming crying sobbing begging for help

[taffywabbit]

reminding myself there are no truly "bad days", because every single day, someone somewhere in the world has taken a photo of an extremely tiny animal and shown it to someone else, and that's very good actually

[gailynovelry]

You know those aesthetic image posts that float around tumblr? I'm . . . starting to see a lot on my dash that are obviously ai-generated. Are non-artists having trouble telling the difference between AI images and real photos, or are people starting to stop care about the stolen art that gets fed into those programs?

[neproxrezi]

YOU THERE! RECENT FOLLOWER WITH NO PROFILE PICTURE. CAN YOU PASS THE TURING TEST

[hamsternamedmarinette]

Hello everyone, here is a comic. I drew this the way I draw all of my comics: with one person (me) and with a punchline planned from the start. Any other way to draw a comic would be very silly and would require me to tag people like @buggachat and @ladybeug if they were somehow in any way involved in the comic making process. Which they weren't. I drew this solo and by myself.

[chillyfeetsteak]

I first became fascinated with it a few years ago when I noticed it out an airplane window on a flight from Texas to Southern California. In an expanse of endless desert, suddenly, a vast body of water. When I got home, I immediately looked it up on a map. The Salton Sea.

It’s the largest landlocked body of water in California. It sits right on top of the San Andreas Fault at over 200 feet below sea level. It is more than twice as salty as the Pacific Ocean. It is completely toxic. And I had never heard of it before then.

(photo essay under the cut)

In the early 1900s the Colorado River was diverted through a series of irrigation canals in order to provide water for the farmlands of Imperial Valley. One of the head-gates broke during a flood, and the desert basin filled with water for 2 years before it was fixed. The unexpected lake soon became a popular vacation destination; it was stocked with fish, and resorts and hotels popped up along its shores. It became known as a great place for sport fishing, waterskiing, and yacht parties. Big name celebrities visited. At one point, it had more annual visitors than Yosemite.

Salton Sea has no outlet, and is only filled via agricultural runoff. As the water evaporated in the hot desert sun, the lake became more and more saline. Chemicals began to build up from the run off causing toxic algae blooms, and mass die-offs of fish and birds started in the 80s. By the 90s, the beaches were littered with fish gills and bird bones and the resorts were abandoned. The lake began to dry up as irrigation run-off was diverted away. The exposed lake bed is also toxic, and the high desert winds kick up the dust, making the air poisonous. 

Despite the unpleasant odor, the noxious air and the summer temperatures regularly reaching 120°, a renaissance of sorts began in the early 2010s. Artist and nomad colonies began to spring up around Salton Sea. Bombay Beach, once a popular resort destination, is now mostly a ghost town, but the folks who remain have turned the ruins on the shores into an outdoor art installation gallery where the found-art sculptures are cyclically destroyed by the elements and then replaced with new ones. Many of the houses and RVs in town are themselves art pieces.

In nearby Slab City, a settlement of off-the-grid lifestylers, you can find even more folk art. Salvation Mountain is a manmade hill painted with bright colors and bible verses and maintained by a community of volunteers. East Jesus is a sculpture garden and art installation. 

This past weekend my partner and I finally made the pilgrimage to the Sea. California has the benefit of being home to a huge array of biomes. In just a couple of hours you can travel from snowy mountain peaks to lush oases to endless sand dunes. Driving the hour or so south from Palm Springs towards Salton Sea is like driving towards the end of the world.

Bombay Beach especially enamored me. The beach is crusted with salt and millions of tiny shells and bones. It smells awful, like sewage and chemicals and low-tide and rotting fish. You drive out onto the beach and park anywhere amongst the sculptures and deteriorating resort ruins. The art feels raw in a way I haven’t experienced before. It reminds me of seeing paleolithic cave art. Humans made this, with no motivation other than to create something intriguing or beautiful or sad. Not much can live out here, but what you find fills me with a great adoration for humanity. Despite the asphyxiation of the natural world, the human spirit persists.

[eastgaysian]

[tokyostreetphoto]

Sakura Alley, Shinjuku 新宿

[ghost-of-diogenes]

[hellsitegenetics]

I'm doing it. Whatever organism this comes up as, I will make a character* of that species. Even if it's a plant. Even if it's a mushroom. Even if it's microscopic. Even if it's barely studied. Even if it's a species I've made before.

(if this comes up as human I might actually cry but I'll still do it)

*probably just a character design but still

String identified: ' g t. at ga t c a, a a caact* tat c. t' a at. t' a . t' ccc. t' a t. t' a c ' a .

( t c a a gt acta c t ' t t)

*a t a caact g t t

Closest match: Sus scrofa family with sequence similarity 76 member B (FAM76B), transcript variant X4, misc_RNA Common name: Wild boar

(image source)

[bienmoreau]

“What you hold onto is less important than the act of holding on itself. It’s so easy to get lost in ourselves and this world. Sometimes you need to find your way back one tiny miracle at a time.” - The Sunshine Court

WISHING THE HAPPIEST OF BOOK BIRTHDAYS TO @korakos! YOU DID IT AND ITS BLOODY BRILLIANT!

Please please excuse the disgusting things my iPad camera has done to this photo. This is the first time in years I’ve done something like this fully traditional and it has stretched so many rusty parts of my brain but I’m SO GLAD I got this done in time for release day! This book is WONDERFUL and I’m so happy it’s now out in the world!

[ethebarbie]

If you love 😘 this pic you own me a reblog 🥰😍