I can call spirits from the vasty deep

welcum iwys!

welcome to my personal blog, where it’s just always gawain and the green knight hours and we reblog aesthetic, fandom, and memelord shit on main like it’s still 2012.

stuff about grad school, life as a phd student, what i’m reading, etc. is part of the fabric of what we do here, and will be tagged #academia! (used to tag things either genuinely about life as an academic, and/or some degree of satirical/frustrated/amused about life as an academic) and #the grad tag (things to do specifically with my life as a grad student), but this isn’t meant to be a studyblr.

okay, it’s… not not a studyblr.

mostly, it’s a miscellany (hah) of things that have made me laugh, or think, not necessarily at the same time. reblogs are not necessarily endorsements, though, if i’ve seen a post several times, i’ll try to pass on the version whose comments i vibe with most.

QUEEQUEG.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it.

I wanted to say something about the book’s political failings, as we get to this occasionally-excruciating passage.

I have no interest in making excuses for the many many axes on which Moby-Dick is a politically clumsy and insensitive book. Its treatment of race often leans on stereotype, and its attempts to exalt some of its nonwhite characters are definitely condescending. The almost total absence of women doesn’t mean it does much better on that front. While Melville was, for a white boy writing at the time, uniquely invested in humanizing people from outside of his culture and bringing attention to the limitations of the white, Christian American perspective, there is definitely some garbage in this book.

In illustrating the book, I want to work with its focus on an embrace and humanization of the other, in a way that’s (hopefully) more conscious and respectful than the text. But a white boy doing this in 2015 isn’t guaranteed to be much better at it than a white boy writing the book in 1850, so I’m open to feedback.

(notes on process for this image specifically later this week)

It seems like a variety of gender equity issues in sports could be at least partially addressed by making events gender neutral but introducing weight/height classes (or the equivalent). Like, the worlds of wrestling and boxing considered & attempted to address the fact that different body types have different competitive assets a very long time ago.

companies really have got to be okay with stagnant profits. what is wrong with earning the same amount every year? why does it always have to be more? it's not sustainable. there are only so many people on the planet you can profit from 😭

This is the thing. If there are only so many people they can profit from, and they demand to see profits go up every year, they will have to steal more out of the pockets of the little people each year, either by paying less, or by charging more. And that is the problem. Because that is exactly what is happening. And the rich get richer. And the poor are getting so poor that it is coming to a crisis point. They seem to have forgotten what happens at the crisis point though: people who have nothing to lose, will rise up and fight.

Cancer: a malignant tumor of potentially unlimited growth that expands locally by invasion and systemically (Merriam Webster)

See also: Capitalism

But also, “increasing profits every quarter” is a relatively recent thing. It’s new since the 1980s! In the 1980s, Reagan heavily promoted the economic theories connected with the Chicago school of economics. (“Reaganomics” is basically the Chicago school ideas dumbed down to fit in soundbites.) The Chicago school is, among other things, responsible for such wonders as “all regulation in the marketplace is always bad” “monopoly is good because it’s efficient” and “trickle-down economics.” When those ideas became mainstream, and were adopted wholeheartedly by Wall Street, they spawned the idea that the most important measure of a company was its stock increasing in value. Not how much business it was doing, not how well its customers liked and valued it, not how stable it was for the long-term. Is its stock increasing is the only measure of value.

Prior to that point, a business--even large corporations!--were valued more on how reliable they are. If I invest in this business, will it still be there five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now? Businesses were good if they were profitable and stable. Increasing profits was wonderful! But they understood that that is not infinitely sustainable, and that if you wanted to maximize long-term profits for individual investors and for the economy as a whole, you did not want flash-in-the-pan trendiness, and you didn’t want a business cannibalizing itself, you wanted a business that was stable and took good care of its customers so they’d keep coming back.

afternoon in the house by Jane Kenyon

i am in such a nielan kick i thought abt lan xichen being the one to calm nie mingjue’s headless fierce corpse and it felt like taking psychic damage

which like. yes the most literal sense of looking at this is that lan xichen is incredibly powerful. however there is also something tragically beautiful abt a corpse stopping his mad search for the rest of his body to just listen to music before he falls to pieces again. and then in nie mingjue’s empathy we learn that lan xichen always made him softer. like. hello. hello. hello. hello. hello.

I love writing. Would love to do it again someday

It's a large order, but I'm sure it can be reached!

The International Cryptozoology Museum is looking to restore and inhabit this historical building located in Bangor, Maine! The museum's current locations are small and make the collection they hold seem crowded. It deserves a larger space to thrive in. It was built in 1945 and served as a garage and car dealership. But it was also eventually used as a laundromat, a taxi depot and a recycling center.

A number of things need to be done to this building to make it safe and modern. The money raised will go toward things like replacing windows and pipes. The International Cryptozoology Museum is a non-profit and relies on donations to survive.

Please consider donating and if you can't donate, sharing is so helpful!

The link to the GoFundMe and a lot more information on the project: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-maines-streamline-moderne-gem-490-broadway

enbeemagical asked:
I saw the Welsh restaurant post, listened to two of the songs so far (Sebona Fi and Ben Rhys), and now I'm curious. What makes Sebona Fi faerie music? Is it bc Ywain Gwynedd sounds like a fae prince, or is it smth else, or a combination? I tried searching it and like half the results just linked to your post XD

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys

Sebona Fi is an absolute cultural phenomenon. It’s absolutely absurdly popular among Welsh speakers, to a rabid extent. People who don’t like modern Welsh music like it; people who only like heavy metal like it; people who don’t speak a lick of Welsh hear it and like it. It’s faerie music because it makes you smile and want to dance, regardless of how you feel that day or whether you even understand it.

Yws Gwynedd played the main stage on the last Saturday of the Eisteddfod last year. I went up for it. Great concert throughout, but the last song they did was, of course, Sebona Fi, and you cannot imagine the crowd response. People went feral. There were little old ladies dancing like nutters. A hundred years could have passed in three minutes, we wouldn’t have known. No one asked for an encore, because they couldn’t have beaten it. We all understood that was the end of the night. Every band that’s lucky has one song that goes down in history, and for Yws Gwynedd it’s Sebona Fi

The translated lyrics, btw:

Go walking right across the sea

Catch your breath, you will faster feel the warm air

Like a kiss on your bare white skin.

Listen to nothing to open your world.

Sit down now, lay down your head,

every little thing will be all right if you sleep through the afternoon.

Because we’re all running like so many rats;

If you have half an hour,

Flatter me.

But remember the same old things are worrying everyone,

But in the end, we’re all dirt

Oh, life is so fine.

The taste of the grape is strong in the wine,

And the company is good.

Sing the song that kept us up,

Hold tightly - cats and dogs* are falling around your head,

But remember there is value to your smile.

Because we’re all running like so many rats;

If you have half an hour,

Flatter me.

But remember the same old things are worrying everyone,

But we’re all dirt in the end.

Oh, life is so fine.

The taste of the grape is strong in the wine,

And the company is good

*as in, it’s raining cats and dogs. The actual Welsh is ‘old ladies and sticks’, and that’s what he sings.

And here it is for anyone wondering what all the fuss is about:

(You may still wonder. But it’s a banger.)