Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43966610587.

Sure. You just need to convince me that you’re the most-deserving of the growing number of people who’ve asked for it, and get me to decide to stop using it myself.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43966566466.

jacobtheloofah:

sarniel:

tbskyen:

tugamaggie:

callmekitto:

raggedymind:

littledidxeknow:

todaylour:

andthroughthemosstheivycreeps:

impuretale:

beatrixspoke:

saaaaaasha:

hey guys

that is carved

 from MARBLE

THAT IS A ROCK

WAT

I have no idea how the artist manages to make it looks like not just cloth, but TRANSPARENT cloth. Amazing.

Hey Guys this is a sculpture of a Vestal Virgin, carved during the roman empire. its my favorite and is pretty fucking awesome. 

Blown away

I had the same reaction when I saw this motherfucker in the Louvre

I walked around that hunk of orgasm rock for a good ten minutes trying to figure out HOW.

b-but that’s not how rocks work???!!?

FUCKING BERNINI THO

FUCKING

BERNINI

DID SOMEONE SAY BERNINI? HERE’S BERNINI SCULPTING A FAT CARDINAL.

HERE’S A SELF-PORTRAIT. HE’S A DAMNED SOUL IN HELL, HE BURNED HIS HAND AND SCREAMED IN FRONT OF A MIRROR FOR REFERENCE BECAUSE FUCK EVERYTHING.

OH AND LET’S TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT THOSE GRASPING ORGASM-HANDS

SPEAKING OF ORGASMS HERE’S A NUN MASTURBATING. HE PUT THAT MOTHERFUCKER IN A FUCKING CHAPEL.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE HE PUT IN A CHAPEL? THIS BITCHING PIECE OF MARBLE.

IS THAT AN ANGEL POINTING A GOLDEN ARROW AT THE CROTCH OF A NUN? YOU BET YOUR FACE IT IS! IS SHE HAVING A MIND-BLOWING ANGEL-ORGASM?

OF FUCKING COURSE SHE IS!

BERNINI!

Reblogging because batshit insane sculptors and horny statues are funny.

i will never understand why people take things like this for granted

like that shit was made of ROCK

IN LIKE AN AGE WHERE TOOLS FOR THIS WERE SO MUCH MORE PRIMITIVE

WE COULD DO THAT SHIT WITH LIKE A 3D PRINTER OR SOMETHING

THESE FUCKERS DID IT WITH THEIR GODDAMN HANDS AND BASIC TOOLS

RESPECT.

Ah, Tumblr.

Okay, so, what I’ve come to learn and love about Tumblr (and I do love it) is that it’s a living example of how oral tradition builds into legend and myth. It’s like what Yann Martel was talking about in Life of Pi: Tumblr’s users prefer the story with the tiger, even when it contains elements (a floating island that eats things?) that can’t be reconciled with everyday reality.

An item gets posted, and people respond to it emotionally. They add explanations, embellishments, personal stories. Over time, some versions get reblogged and amplified. Versions that tell a more satisfying story have a competitive edge, and by the time something has passed 100K notes the chance that it is factually accurate becomes really small.

I’ve been an editor on Wikipedia for many years. And with Wikipedia, there’s an explicit cultural norm that values accuracy and verifiability. Tumblr doesn’t have that, and it shows. And that’s fine; they’re different kinds of things.

This post is an interesting example of that. The original photo of the veiled marble statue is striking. Damn; how’d the sculptor do that? And then… Tumblr takes over.

Hey Guys this is a sculpture of a Vestal Virgin, carved during the roman empire. its my favorite and is pretty fucking awesome.

Yes, it’s a sculture of a vestal virgin, but no, it was not carved during the Roman Empire. Most people who recognize it probably do so because of the scene in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth stares at it in wonder while touring Pemberley. But even in that movie, the statue is an anachronism. It’s Raffaelle Monti’s “A Veiled Vestal Virgin”, sculpted in 1847, decades after the Regency era when Austen’s stories were set, and a good 1300 years after the Roman Empire fell. That awesome simulation of veiled cloth over a marble figure became really popular during the Victorian era. Not that there aren’t things sort of like that in older statuary, but if you’re talking about this degree of the illusion, you’re talking about something from the mid-19th century or later.

SPEAKING OF ORGASMS HERE’S A NUN MASTURBATING. HE PUT THAT MOTHERFUCKER IN A FUCKING CHAPEL.

Um, no. The sculpture is at least a Bernini; it’s his Beata Ludovica Albertoni, a funerary monument he created for the Altieri Chapel in the church of San Francesco a Ripa in Rome in 1674. But the subject of the sculpture is 1) not a nun, but a lay tertiary; and 2) not masturbating (you can see both hands in the image above, and unless you’re counting touching her breast as masturbation she’s not) but dying. And yes, Bernini is interpreting a religious ecstasy as part of her death throes, and it really does look a lot like sexual ecstasy, but describing it as “a nun masturbating” is just… wrong.

There are more examples of untrue things being presented as fact in this post, but the point is just: Don’t expect the information on Tumblr to be even remotely true. Because it usually isn’t. It will tell an emotionally compelling story. But that’s not the same thing.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43937260472.

thbrogan:

attempt to reenact that scene from the battle of helm’s deep was thwarted by utter lack of ambition

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43913309819.

thefrogman:

[video]

So many kittens, so few philosophers.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43913149301.

In recent years, biologists have recognized that birds engage in play. Juvenile Common Ravens are among the most playful of bird species. They have been observed to slide down snowbanks, apparently purely for fun. They even engage in games with other species, such as playing catch-me-if-you-can with wolves, otters and dogs.^[77] Common Ravens are known for spectacular aerobatic displays, such as flying in loops or interlocking talons with each other in flight.^[78][79]

They are also one of only a few wild animals who make their own toys. They have been observed breaking off twigs to play with socially.^[80]

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43912886929.

Pretty dresses at the Getty, third of three. From the Getty placard:

Portrait of Thérèse, Countess Clary Aldringen (1896)

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925)

Oil on canvas

As if about to speak, Countess Clary Aldringen (1867-1930) invites the viewer to enter her space (actually Sargent’s London studio, complete with stage props). The white satin gown — with wide sleeves emphasizing her lithe figure — is rendered with Sargent’s bravura technique, painted at lightning speed at the height of his career. Commissioned by the sitter’s husband, while he was counselor to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in London, for the family castle in Czechoslovakia, the portrait exemplifies the international quality of Sarget’s practice, as well as why Rodin called him “the Van Dyck of our times.”

Lent by Renée and Lloyd Greif

[me again]

There’s an interesting article about Sargent, and this painting, at the Getty web site: 85 Years after John Singer Sargent. Another site dedicated to Sargent has a page that gives this provenance for the painting:

Formerly in the collection of Aldringe, Clara, Countess, until 1930.

Latour, Henri de Baillet, Countess, 1930-1945.

Anonymous collection, 1945.

Unknown collection,

Sotheby’s, New York, New York Sale (Nov. 22, 1988), lot 56.

If I’m reading that correctly, it says that the painting belonged to Thérèse (the lady in the painting) from the time it was painted (when she was 29) until her death at 63. It then passed to a different countess, the wife of Count Henri de Baillet-Latour, a Belgian aristocrat who was the third president of the International Olympic Committee, and whose tenure including presiding over the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympics. He died in 1942, and if my guess is correct his wife survived him by three years, until 1945, when she died and the painting passed through a couple of unspecified owners until it was sold at auction to its current owners, the Greifs, in 1988.

I spent a while staring at that strand of pearls on the dress’s bodice. I don’t know what you would even call that sort of jewelry, but then I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the adornments of 18th-century aristocrats. But I thought it was pretty.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43901460035.

thbrogan:

I climbed a mountain and all I got was this fucking picture.

Good lord. You’re a Brontë heroine.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43898077411.

evopropinquitous:

Things I Learned as a Field Biologist #294

One day, you may notice that one of your mosquito bites has begun to hurt… like a needle being pushed insistently and repeatedly into your skin. As the days pass by, the poking becomes more intense, and the pain a bit deeper, and the bump is beginning to grow…

When you look more closely at the offending bite, you may see something mildly horrifying: a small proboscis, wetly reaching out for air, before disappearing quickly back into a tiny, suppurating hole in your skin.

Congratulations.

You have a botfly.

Pay attention now, here’s what you should do:

1) DO NOT JUST LET IT GO.

I know you’re tempted… we’ve all been there: “Something is parasitizing me in a most vile and disgusting manner?! Let’s leave it alone and see what it does!” But this is just not acceptable. It’s gross. And I think by now we should all know that it cannot turn out well.

If you doubt me, see the above video (in which several friends and I can be seen having a beer while contemplating the spectacle – and biceps – of someone NOT paying attention to point 1 above).

2) Name it.

Naming things makes them marginally less disgusting. My first botfly was called Fergie (after someone whose vocal presence roughly approximates the feeling of being stabbed by a needle over and over again).

3) Kill it.

Killing a botfly is fairly simple. To suffocate the bot, a bit of duct tape can be applied to the bite area. I recommend also putting a bit of vaseline directly over the air hole, to deprive it of even the remotest possibility of breathing and thus continuing to feed off of my bodily fluids. Some try to coax the bot out using either positive stimuli (raw meat) or negative stimuli (tobacco, cigarette butts), but this beats around the bush. Just kill it. 

Why kill it, you may ask?  Well, dear friend, because this is what it looks like. Every time you try to extract it while alive, it will dig in with those spikes (see video above for an example of a difficult live birth – and more biceps).

4) Birth it.

Once the bot is dead (it usually takes a day or two using the duct tape method), you get to extract the corpse! This is the best part. I typically use a standard snake bite suction kit. Simply latch on, and increase the suction by pushing in the plunger. Naturally, because of the spikes, this will take a while, and more suction than one might expect, but the results are spectacular and not a little satisfying. Soon you’ll have a bloody, pussy explosion inside the cup! Birth!

5) Save it.

Be sure to rifle through the schrapnel of your bot’s explosive parturition to find the bot, because now that it’s no longer feeding on your vital fluids, it’s actually really frakking awesome (and looks incredible in a small test tube on the mantle).

Field biologists have fun parties.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43879049854.

Mademoiselle Tam: succexiest: theangelshave-thephonebox: did you know that you can…:

succexiest:

theangelshave-thephonebox:

did you know that you can download a program called adblock for chrome that stops advertisements from playing in front of youtube videos?

putting this in the lbd tag simply because i know all of you are tired of the diet pepsi commercial that…

I think in about 6 weeks I’m going to be wishing I could have the Pepsi ad back — as long as it is in front of a new LBD video.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43874345334.

leadfromthefront:

I’m watching the season 3 finale of Downton Abbey and I just noticed that the Scotland estate they’re vacationing at has Caspar David Friedrich paintings on the wall. 

How swanky. 

Hm. I’ve been unable to find any actual Caspar David Friedrich paintings that match those. They certainly appear (to my untrained eye) to be his style. But maybe they’re actually a different artist? Anyone know?

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43850864636.

dduane:

(grin) Because here we are, contumaciously posting and reblogging while over 30. (Or 20. Or 15.)

Reblog, if you like, and display with pride.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43843957347.

genderific:

leslielikesthings:

snowbelle:

I’ve been seeing a lot of speculation on what the next adaptation could be, and how it’s going to blend into this universe, and thought I’d throw my dream into the mix.

I admit, I really want Domino/Pemberley/Lizzie be involved in the creation of the new series, and for us to be able to keep up a little with Lizzie, Darcy, Gigi and Fitz specifically (as Pemberley employees/vlogging mentors/etc) throughout the adaptation. And therefore see a wedding play out, even if we don’t get to see everything we so obviously want to. ;)

(Or, alternately, I also saw someone post that they wanted to see/hear about Darcy proudly sitting at Lizzie’s thesis defense, which would be just as awesome.)

In terms of the next book, I was excited to see LM Montgomery tossed into the ring by Bernie. Anne is everyone’s favorite (mine included, let’s be honest), and I would be so delighted with her, or with Emily. But my top choice for LMM would be The Blue Castle. It’s the story of Valancy, a mousy twentysomething who is pretty much entirely submissive to her bitchy, overbearing family, until she goes to the doctor and learns that her heart is failing and she has one year left to live. She decides to really live that year, breaks out of the mold her family has her in, makes her own choices, takes a job her family is horrified by and marries the guy she has a crush on but her family/town hates (with him full knowing she’s going to die).

It’s got a small scope of characters, and a character who is convinced she is going to die is not going to have many qualms about what she shares on the internet. It’s got romance, humor, strong female relationships and a woman taking control of her life. There are definite challenges involved in adapting it, but I think it would be pretty damn amazing to see. Anne’s my favorite, but Valancy is the one I understand the most.

Check it on Amazon.

Read the full text for free at Project Gutenberg.

Yesssss!!!! I was just making a post about how much I love The Blue Castle, and I decided to check tags to see if anybody else was writing about it. This would be amazing. They’ll probably go with something more well known, but I could totally see this working in the vlog format. 

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and this is my year of living dangerously.” 

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and I’m about to start living life to the fullest.”  

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and I am going to die.”  

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and I may have just made the biggest mistake of my life.”  

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and this is my bucket list.”  

Seriously though, I could definitely see Valancy creating some kind of bucket list and making vlogs to update the world on her success.  Maybe a vlog (or, honestly, even just a blog?) would be on her bucket list.  

If Bernie Su doesn’t do this, anyone want to co-opt it????

That really does sound fantastic. I would so love to see that. And yeah, if Hank and Bernie don’t do it, I would love to see someone else give it a shot.

One of the really interesting things about LBD is how inexpensive it was to produce. I mean, it was expensive by the standards of people on YouTube, but compared to big-budget (or even small-budget) TV shows, it was incredibly cheap. Bernie Su has said the whole series was shot using an $800 camera and a $100 microphone. There were no licensing fees, since the original work is out of copyright. Locations and costumes were cheap, since the story was set in a contemporary bedroom. They didn’t need stunts or special effects. There wasn’t much editing. They didn’t do marketing. There weren’t any distribution costs.

There was time and effort for the people involved. They paid a relatively small amount (I assume) for the writers, transmedia, and production people. And I assume they paid a somewhat larger amount for professional actors.

And unless I’m missing something, that was pretty much it.

What that means is that putting on a show like this is within the financial reach of anyone who’s sufficiently motivated. That’s one of the things that has frustrated me about some of the criticism of LBD that I’ve seen: If you don’t like the creative choices they made in putting on this show, you’re not limited to carping about it on Tumblr. You can make your own show. You can go beyond complaining, and actually fix the thing that bothers you.

Of course, actually creating a compelling artistic work in a collaborative medium like this is a lot more complicated than just criticizing story choices after the fact. You’d have to find people willing to collaborate with you, and communicate a vision that was compelling enough to bring them along. You’d have to find, and presumably pay, decent actors. You’d have to come up with some money (not much, but some).

It would probably be a lot more work, and a much more deferred payoff, than the immediate gratification of picking apart someone else’s creation. But there’d be an actual creation of your own at the end of the process.

I think the Anton Ego speech is relevant:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends… Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

Some of the people who’ve been critical of the LBD team’s creative choices have come up with some really awesome-sounding ideas for how the show could have been better. And look: If Hank and Bernie and company could do this, and be as successful as they have been even with all their shortcomings and problematic choices, how much more awesome (or at least, differently awesome) could your version of LBD have been?

So go create it. I would love to watch that.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43840036184.

Pretty dresses at the Getty, second of three. From the Getty placard:

Portrait of Princess Leonilla of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (1843)

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (German, 1805-1873; active in France from 1834)

Oil on canvas

Winterhalter flattered his aristocratic patrons with suave compositions that conveyed their wealth and sophistication. Typical of his clientele was Leonilla (1816-1918), a Russian-born princess active in fashionable Parisian circles. She is portrayed reclining on a luxurious carpet amid silk bolsters on the portico of a seaside palace. Although the setting was considered exotic and her pose daring, the sumptuous gown is a reminder of Leonilla’s refined background.

[me again]

This portrait dominates its side of the room. When I entered I noticed a couple examining the lower part of the painting, and I wondered what they were looking at. When I got a chance to approach closer I understood; the moiré patterns Winterhalter painted in the silk gown are amazing.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43812418882.

graphic-closet-play:

leadfromthefront:

I’m watching the season 3 finale of Downton Abbey and I just noticed that the Scotland estate they’re vacationing at has Caspar David Friedrich paintings on the wall. 

How swanky. 

So Downton just got better! God I love this wonderful artist and his paintings. Its the prelude to the existential crisis of the Human Being. The coming of age of reason and the ideals based upon it.

Ooh. I now want to figure out which Friedrich paintings those are.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43793141324.

Let’s consult the Magic 8-Ball:

Signs point to no

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43793049732.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43791340505.

Thoughts on things: unchartedlife13: aeternamente: allinablur: I don’t think it’s…:

unchartedlife13:

aeternamente:

allinablur:

I don’t think it’s impossible for us to get (even if it’s just) a little plot development on Lizzie’s Q&A video tomorrow. Gigi first asked Lizzie about the San Francisco tour with her and Darcy during the last Q&A video…

Actually…

I believe there have been eight Q&A videos in the main LBD channel:

1. Lizzie and Lydia
2. Lizzie and Charlotte
3. Lizzie and Caroline
4. Lizzie and Jane
5. Lizzie and Wickham (and briefly, Hank)
6. Lizzie and Fitz
7. Lizzie and Collins
8. Lizzie and Gigi

So yes, she has always had a partner, and the partner has always been someone new. So if they’re being consistent, we will probably get Lizzie and Bing tomorrow, and then maybe one more with Lizzie and Darcy in March.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43769488564.

Hooray! Every time I drop further down the list I feel younger. Currently I know of:

• The mystery user from the Sherlock fandom who is 74.
• Someone whose details I lost track of, but who I believe is 61 or 62.
• dduane, who is (I think?) 61.
• neil-gaiman, who is 52 (thanks!)
• me, who is 50.

I’m sure there are lots of others, and rather than continuing to maintain a ranking of those I’ve discovered, I’m just going to bask in the sense of actuarial possibility conferred by my middle-of-the-flock status. I still really want to find that 74-year-old, but that trail has grown rather cold.

Still, he’s out there somewhere.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43765060228.

Reblogging to impose my in-universe interpretation: This is post-LBD, where the now-united Darcy and Lizzie go out for a drink, only to be photobombed by Mr. Collins.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/43764655098.