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god does anyone have a screenshot of that author's note where mxtx is like "idk why fans think lxc is smart. i've done nothing to show that" bc i think of it every day of my life

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Janelle Monáe attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 05, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images) if you want to support this blog consider donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways

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The thing about gay sailors in the Victorian era is that England and America had totally different takes on it. In the british navy they could, and did, literally kill men for having consensual relationships with other men. But in the US navy, even tho John Adams literally copied England's naval regulations when making America's version, he chose to leave out every proscription against sodomy. And no one knows why!!! England was like hmm yes the death penalty and America was like i dont really see how thats my business. And like gay American sailors could still be charged with things like "uncleanliness" or "indecency" (charges that were vague enough to cover a lot of different things) but bc it wasnt specifically forbidden in the regulations "the commanding officers [were given] wide discretion to prosecute, punish, or ignore."*

And by and large US officers seem to have ignored it. We literally have the records of every flogging (the most extreme form of punishment allowed during these specific years) onboard a naval vessel for the years of 1846-1848 and almost all of the cases that involved homosexual activity "unambiguously refer to male/male homosexual activity involving attempted assaults on children, not consensual couplings between adults."* There are also multiple recorded instances throughout the Victorian Era of an American sailor coming forward with a charge of sexual assault and pulling in other sailors or even officers as witnesses who tell their captain yeah i totally saw them and didn't say anything until this sailor told me it was nonconsensual. There are even records recorded by naval recruitment officers of men with extremely explicit gay tattoos being allowed to join the navy. Why did the US navy not care enough to even include it in the regulations while the British navy literally hanged men for it??? Were we so hard up for sailors that John Adams was like bitch we need every gay sailor we can get????

And weirdly enough this was true on American Whaling ships too! In the recorded cases where homosexual activity led to sailors being disciplined (in some cases punishment so mild as just being dropped off their ship at the next port) it was usually in situations where rape was involved and/or there was a high degree of ship disruption related to it (guys getting into a public knife fight for example). Idk I just think thats so interesting especially when America and England were so similar to be so different in this particular area is fascinating

*quotes from Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail by William Benemann

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via starfishshoma on x

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Aubade

by Louise Glück

There was one summer that returned many times over there was one flower unfurling taking many forms

Crimson of the monarda, pale gold of the late roses

There was one love There was one love, there were many nights

Smell of the mock orange tree Corridors of jasmine and lilies Still the wind blew

There were many winters but I closed my eyes The cold air white with dissolved wings

There was one garden when the snow melted Azure and white; I couldn’t tell my solitude from love —

There was one love; he had many voices There was one dawn; sometimes we watched it together

I was here I was here

There was one summer returning over and over there was one dawn I grew old watching

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after reading a bunch of classical literature i’ve decided to revive the concept of knighthood all by myself

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The Bird Daughters. A comic about a bird woman and her dreams. made in the spring of 2023.

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From the Orca Conservancy FB page:

"Yesterday L Pod made history as the first Southern Resident killer whales to return to Penn Cove since the horrific captures in 1970.

Ls surprised us all again by not only returning to Penn Cove, only this time, going much further into the cove. As they entered they were very surface active with many breaches and spy hops. As the day got later they appeared to be resting in the cove.

Orcas are cultural animals and pass down information from generation to generation. The whales that experienced the 1970s capture forever avoided the area and taught their offspring to avoid it as well. L25 is the only remaining Resident that was alive during the captures, and she was present with L Pod as they entered Penn Cove.

It’s hard to say why they have chosen now to return. One possible explanation is that there has been enough lapse in generations that the younger generation is more open to exploring new places. We hope their continued presence in Saratoga Passage is an indication they are finding food. And it’s entirely possible that today they decided to duck into Penn Cove to get out of the wind gusts and rest."

If nothing else good happens this week, this happened 🥹

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cosplay progress!!! no ears yet.

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Q&A: Let's Have a Conclave!

Q: What happened to Pope Francis?

A: He got old and died.

Q: Why is your tag "#deadfrank 2k25"?

A: Because he died, he was called Francis (although his real first name was Jorge), and it's 2025.

Q: What's happening now?

A: The Catholic Church is preparing for a new Pope, who will be elected in a conclave, like from the noted book and movie Conclave. This conclave will be sometime between May 5 and May 10; what's going on until then is a series of funerary rituals and "general congregations," i.e. meetings of the cardinals to discuss their overall thoughts on what they might like to see for the Church when they start voting. The conclave is strictly secret but the general congregations aren't; however, the cardinals tend in practice to be cagey about both stages in the process. Cardinals who vote in the conclave itself have an age limit of eighty, but the general congregations are open to older cardinals as well.

Q: What are the important numbers to remember with the conclave?

A: The total number of cardinals voting is going to be somewhere in the low 130s; 135 are eligible, two said they couldn't make it for health reasons, and now it looks like one of those two might be able to make it after all, putting the current figure at 133 or 134. To get elected Pope you need two-thirds of that, which currently is either 89 or 90.

Q: Who's in charge in the meantime?

A: Kevin Farrell, the Camerlengo (chamberlain) of the Holy Roman Church, a frankly somewhat dislikeable old snake with an MBA who used to be Bishop of Dallas (yes, the one in Texas) before getting appointed to a central position in Rome.

Q: What is the next Pope going to be like?

A: Firm answer: Nobody knows.

My educated guess: It's going to be someone who continues a lot of Francis's priorities, but maybe not one of the big names and maybe not the priorities people in the First World tend to associate with him. The Western conservatives are alienating the sort of Global South wild cards they'd have to win over, and we're getting statements stressing continuity and finishing the work Francis started from people like Rwanda's Antoine Kambanda and Myanmar's Charles Maung Bo. These are people who are going to want to see more of Francis's informality, his populism, and probably his focus on climate action and poverty relief. What that would mean for women's or LGBT people's status in the Church could be almost anything, since plenty of people in the developing world with the above views are very socially conservative otherwise, but the full-on reactionaries seem pretty locked out.

Q: Who are some of the papabili ("pope-able") cardinals?

A: Tolentino de Mendonça, Tagle, Zuppi, Parolin, Grech, Prevost, López Romero, Aveline, Pizzaballa, Turkson, Arborelius, Ambongo, Ranjith, and Erdő are some of the names to look into here, listed vaguely from "left" to "right" (although these are tricky terms in this context and at least one voting cardinal, Malaysia's Sebastian Francis, avowedly thinks using them is a form of Eurocentrism). But it doesn't have to be one of them; in fact, it doesn't even have to be one of the cardinals voting; it just always is.

Q: Is he seriously named that?

A: Yes, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the bishop responsible for (among other things) most Palestinian Christians, is really named Pierbattista Pizzaballa. I'm told it sounds silly even to native speakers of Italian.

Q: Is my fave [Tagle/Zuppi/Erdő if I have anyone like that following me/Pizzaballa/whoever] going to be Pope?

A: There's no one odds-on favorite, so probably not.

Q: Is my least fave going to be Pope?

A: See above.

Q: Who are you, monstrousgourmandizingcats, rooting for?

A: Zuppi, but it's not up to me.

Q: Is Kevin from Dallas a papabile?

A: Lmao no.

Q: Why are all these people men?

A: There ain't no rule that says a cardinal has to be a man, since a cardinal is technically a separate thing from a priest, but it would be very very difficult for all sorts of logistical and cultural reasons for a pope to actually appoint a woman as a cardinal, and not even Pope Francis ever seriously considered it. There is one woman, a nun called Simona Brambilla, who accidentally got an email inviting her to the general congregations because she's the head of a dicastery (a department of the Church's central government), but unfortunately she doesn't seem to have taken the mailing list up on it.

Q: Is the process fun to follow?

A: Very fun, yes, but also stressful for those of us who care a lot about the Church's direction.

Q: What's the talk among the cardinals focusing on so far?

A: According to Italian-language news, which is usually the most informed on this stuff, the big topics are migrant/refugee issues and how powerful the Church's central administration should be, not necessarily in that order.

Q: Any drama so far?

A: Yes! Angelo Becciu, a corrupt cardinal who resigned his right to sit in a conclave after a criminal conviction for fraud, had resignee's remorse, showed up for one of the general congregations, and had to be escorted out by the Swiss Guards. Kevin from Dallas got taken off Mass duty for (iirc) the sixth of the "Novemdiales" (nine days) of formal mourning for Pope Francis and they replaced him with Víctor Manuel Fernández, an Argentinian cardinal whom the right flank of the Church despises because he's the architect of kinda-sorta-if-you-squint allowing blessings of same-sex couples. Some conservative old guard cardinals supposedly descended on their safe deposit boxes for blinged-out gold pectoral crosses that Francis wouldn't let them wear while he was alive. I'm sure there's much much more to come!

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be pro-aging but wear sun screen. sun protection is not beauty industry propaganda it will save you. wear it. or else.

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Wood planing competition for thinnest plane of wood

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not to be insensitive but some of the salem witch trials were so funny bitches like “i saw her at the devils sacrament!!!” girl... what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament 👀

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Fujo Out for 27 Years.