Tarnport

https://mastodon.green/@Tarnport

Bon vivant, aspirant

Joined: Oct 28, 2022
Location: Southern Europe
Toots auto-delete in: 1 week

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npub1eshu978jvr5p6hpu2yz52x8ddydq7a38qmprk3u0vfrv7rrs43ws44wk4a

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[email protected]

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nprofile1qqsvct7zlrexp6qats79zp29rrkkjxs0wcnsds3mg78ky3k0p3c2chgpqqc94a06

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npub1eshu978jvr5p6hpu2yz52x8ddydq7a38qmprk3u0vfrv7rrs43ws44wk4a

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Last Notes

2026-08-25 18:42:42 UTC

My favourite Dolly quote was after an interviewer asked her how long it took to do her hair like that. And quick as a whip, she said...
Honey, I don't know. I'm never there!

2026-08-24 08:05:33 UTC

Basically our ancestors were stoned to the gills.
What we have received from them as sacrosanct and insight was really just them messing around, various accidents and pranks "with no particular meaning." Elton John says he doesn't even remember writing half his songs. And one has to wonder if it's not always been so, on up the line of inherited dogmas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusk_

2026-08-23 21:19:43 UTC

No alt-text, no boost. Please #AltText

2026-08-15 14:16:18 UTC

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nice. Thank you.
This older film might also interest you, similar themes:
https://youtu.be/zbXBg7I7MQc

2026-08-12 03:18:02 UTC

Rain feels like something we recall from another era and try to explain to our children who just shrug sympathetically without any understanding of what, or how useful, it was.

2026-08-04 20:30:49 UTC

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damn poor car design. I did the same thing on a Ford 3 months ago. It was sore for weeks. I'm so sympathetic! Keep an eye on that pumpnoggon and I hope it goes away fast.

2026-08-04 06:02:01 UTC

Do fedi folks have advice about wildfire smoke air filtration, both indoors and masks?
We are in an area under threat. We'd like to prepare but not go overboard, as ultimately the plan is to evacuate, so any measures here are emergency only and temporary.
Our minimum zone to filter is 35m². 1.0 micron seems possible, but is 2.5-3.0 good enough? Coway and Levoit brands home models are our current picks, but any other guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks.
#AskFedi

2026-08-03 20:50:55 UTC

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"Hitler had told his generals on 22 August, "I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident

2026-08-03 20:21:27 UTC

Leonora Carrington. Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945.
This article is a good artistic assessment of a work which is almost always discussed in terms of gross financial worth first:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/leonora-carrington-les-distractions-de-dagobert-2718627
I will only add that they elide the period of her nervous breakdown and abandonment by Ernst with a few glib words, when the reality was horrific sexual violence. She undertook an amazing rebirth which informs her later feminist activism in Mexico.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/117/033/384/401/873/007/original/e329be1546ea2617.jpg

2026-08-03 07:42:36 UTC

Franciszek Honiok
Famously he was the first victim of WW2, but we wouldn't know anything about him, or the origin of the false-flag Nazi operation that murdered him and started the war, except for the Nuremberg Trials. He has no memorial and his body was never found. How many others remain unknown? And how much like the regimes we're familiar with the today to plant such false flags.
[This was prompted by a TIL post someone deleted earlier and I wish they hadn't!]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciszek_Honiok

2026-07-31 06:09:26 UTC

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further I think they were making the point that Africa doesn't matter to them one whit. "Taking full responsibility" as a badge of pride.

2026-07-26 17:39:51 UTC

If you've traveled Italy you may be as mindblown as I am by this #Geography trivia.
Because "the boot" is set at an angle to the cardinal directions, you can get all turned around!
E.g., Florence is directly south of Bologna and they're just 1 hour apart.
Milan is due north of Sardinia.
Venice, Rome and Palermo are all aligned vertically on the same longitude.
All of Puglia is east of Trieste.
Bonus: Northern Italy and SW France are at roughly the same latitude as Montréal and Mongolia.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/987/462/082/830/598/original/e366070b9b7bf7c7.jpg

2026-07-17 06:57:37 UTC

I visited two underground sites yesterday, one an abandoned marble mine, the other a 1900 year old underground nymphaeum complex later adapted by Christians, with the paint still on the walls. In both places the ambient air temp dropped to less than 17c instantly upon descent, and I felt the future of my species, with mixed emotions. We will have to learn to dig again.

2026-07-15 11:50:29 UTC

I walked in to ask for an appointment and the barber said, you know what, I can squeeze you in now, I have just 12 minutes. So the dude laid into my hair and without so much as a "how do you want it?" just cut it plum off! To the nubbins, mowed it down. And you know what, I'm going to like this. At the end he squirted some gel on his palms, wiped over the carnage, and like magic it took perfect shape, good as it's ever looked. Well done!

2026-07-13 13:21:15 UTC

There's an odd doublethink in our era: It's often the same people who bewail current-day imperialism, colonialism, militarism & the manosphere, who also like to play videogames based on feudal slavery, admire the ruins of medieval castles & churches, and debate the history of Rome & Gengis Khan. Maybe the older a thing gets the more sanitized it becomes, but the origin is in fact the same violence. I suppose that's just a bleaching of bones.

2026-07-13 06:19:25 UTC

Someone (you know who you are!) recently told me that dahlias are considered "vulgar" and so now every time I see one I want to yell Hubba-Hubba!

2026-07-09 08:12:46 UTC

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thank you for sharing these. "A timber baron" - the irony

2026-07-06 06:17:58 UTC

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How so many major historic personalities accomplished all they did and died by age of 50 is another mystery.

2026-07-05 13:53:05 UTC

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[2/2]
Someone asked me last night if I was devastated by the recent losses from the heat on my terrace. At first I didn't know what they meant, but then I realized that's probably how most people think of gardening, as static win or loss. But I tend to think of it as a story in seasons, a community always evolving, a work forever in progress. There's no finality but constant change, like a painting that's never finished, layer over layer of striving and yes sometimes glories, which come and go.

2026-07-05 13:45:08 UTC

This beauty decided to finally grace us this morning. There's a story here: I bought it for 10 cents in a close-out bin in a grocery store checkout line in April. It was far too late to sink it and I thought it wouldn't come up, but it finally did. And then I thought, well, but it won't bloom, but it eventually has. It's not the blue-black color advertized on the package, of course, but I didn't expect it to be, and it's perfect as it is, in red...
[1/2]
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/867/658/644/642/765/original/086e8b13c44d91e7.jpg

2026-06-28 09:06:22 UTC

#Recipe
For overgrown squash & other vegs, one solution is tajine but an easier one is to stuff and roast them. If you don't want to go to all the trouble of real stuffing, and maybe even frying bread crumbs in butter seems too long or heavy, you can just mix bread crumbs with olive oil salt parmesan spices in a bowl, hollow and wipe the vegs with oil and salt, and loosely pile on the bread mixture. Broil hot until brown & the vegs are cooked but still firm. Adjust to your own taste! Enjoy.

2026-06-27 06:59:30 UTC

Deserted city under the broiler.
We haven't seen anything like this since covid began.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/762/382/838/975/original/3e7dee43c637a0ac.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/762/039/923/877/original/7bd65444dab554a9.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/762/216/970/469/original/b1a5d570998e1af5.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/820/761/796/332/402/original/06bdff5a533c687b.jpg

2026-06-07 15:53:34 UTC

Ciambotta season began today at my house.
#Recipe
https://thisitaliankitchen.com/ciambotta/
(Don't worry about proportions, additions or substitutions. That's the whole point! Flat beans, fennel, even chickpeas and salami - it's just a simple fast peasant summer stew, and imo generally more forgiving than ratatouille or caponata.)

2026-05-29 17:34:07 UTC

A friend just told me what she's being asked to pay for an assisted-living care facility in the USA. It's literally 11 times what I imagined as the top cost possible. I'm going to start parking American old people in wheelchairs on my porch and serving martinis and hors-d'œuvres. I'll get top ratings and they will have a better time.
More seriously it brings up so many issues, from quality of life to impactful living and legacy, but most of all the insane cost of medical care for profit.

2026-05-15 15:45:12 UTC

https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/579/357/803/816/316/original/9e743c1ed1768a8f.jpg

2026-05-15 11:58:41 UTC

My old friend the Devil.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/457/928/698/917/original/2b6a9708ed9ea013.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/459/696/507/217/original/1d30dd0b7c7f6219.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/460/836/491/441/original/74192b2cbfdb4bd4.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/578/461/326/233/267/original/70e6a9d81f334f44.jpg

2026-04-27 04:43:43 UTC

My own research leads me again and again to put any money I'm spending on vitamins and supplements into real whole diversified quality nutrient-rich food, which absorbs better and has other corollary benefits at the same time (plus the pleasure of eating well).
We've never seen an era with more access to diverse foods. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.

2026-04-02 13:12:59 UTC

The African immigrants who run my barbershop have a bonsai and somewhere they also found a small gold giraffe about the same height to graze it. I am endlessly charmed by this quirky tableau.

2026-03-24 09:54:57 UTC

Someone is coming to visit me from the Western Hemisphere who was adamant about the Imperial System of measures, and so naturally I've been brushing up my arguments and sharpening my fangs. This debate has run through our entire lives. However the more I read about the 24-hour day and 12-month year and 60-minute hour and 60-second minute, the more their argument of human scale is self-evident. Like the French Revolution, I may just have to cede regarding useful measures of time. Touché.

2026-03-22 09:57:52 UTC

As long as I'm in the bed no one can call it unmade.

2026-03-18 08:58:45 UTC

Editor's note: One of the hallmarks of current AI/LLM writing is repetition or looping, which can look like fishing or begging, restatement, belaboring points, or reiteration (see what I did there?). One way to distinguish your own writing as superior is to say what you mean once, clearly and finally. Boil it down, clean it up, let it stand.
#Writing

2026-03-15 15:21:35 UTC

Philip James de Loutherbourg. An Avalanche in the Alps, 1803.
Here is the very epitome of "staffage" in painting: Insignificant as they may seem, without those tiny human and animal actors for scale and drama, the effect of all the rest would be entirely lost. It's a word we don't use enough: staffage! Once you know it, you see it everywhere in action.
This is also early Romanticism, starting to push back hard against industrialization and the rational Enlightenment neoclassical.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/116/233/860/530/999/440/original/55c5a2ad04c53478.jpg

2026-02-06 05:22:29 UTC

I'm looking for folk singers and musicians to pass on a song a friend wrote for Minnesota. Please dm.

2026-02-01 15:08:30 UTC

Every day abroad is an adventure. Today it's explaining Bob Ross to a bunch of young video game set designers and... I might as well have thrown a ball of elemental phosphorus onto the table. They exploded in incandescent sizzling! "What, what, WHAT IS THIS???" I have either created magic or a monster. Why not both?

2026-01-31 07:37:33 UTC

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:possum_blush:

2026-01-30 17:05:09 UTC

I just want to say thank you to the Americans on here who have evidently made a concerted effort to start putting an F to specify when they are talking about Fahrenheit degrees.
I can't imagine what prompted the recent shift, but it makes a difference, it's clearer and respectful to the rest of the world, and I for one have noticed the change.

2026-01-30 09:39:49 UTC

Anyone expecting the USA to have free, fair, uncontested elections at this point is being intentionally obtuse. If someone is building a battering ram in your front yard right in plain sight, it's unreasonable to believe they're not intending to use it on your door.
Before laboring to get out the vote, I think we might need to labor to get out the fash, sine qua non.

2026-01-25 15:42:30 UTC

Just off a group call with Americans. Liberal New England older females, educated, some bgltq+... Wow. They still don't get it. They are talking about calling their Senators. They are talking about voting harder, impeaching Trump, and then "he'll have no choice, that's the law."
Oh dear. While one of their daughters adopted from China is refusing to go outside.
There's also a weird subtext of "I can always run to Canada/Europe" - like that option is taken for granted and they'd be welcomed.

2026-01-25 00:39:34 UTC

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fyi it's on heavy rotation in Europe. Every detail. Often before they show up here or in the American press.

2026-01-24 09:19:37 UTC

There was an unprecedented actual cyclone in the Mediterranean 2 days ago that caused billions in damage to heavily populated coastal areas most everyone has heard of if not been to personally (Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria, etc.)
I mention it because big as it was, this event barely made the news. And because it's evidence that even if we are politically victorious in pushing back fascism, we still have the problem of climate change. Existently speaking it's far more important.

2026-01-24 09:04:39 UTC

Alt-text images get more boosts because alt-text facilitates equal access, automatic translation, screen readers, low-bandwidth access, and searchability.
#AltText

2026-01-24 07:10:02 UTC

One big change this week is we can stop having the constant conversation about whether it's really fascism.
Americans in general now seem awake to their real situation and how dire it is, already past the point of no return. Even my most die-hard "hands-across-the-aisle" liberal friend admitted it this week. She was the last holdout. She believed the courts or congress or the Dems would rise to help. She sees now we're way past that limit.

2026-01-21 08:38:54 UTC

General Strike as a vector cartoon.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/932/179/175/761/749/original/5f0cc98897524a42.jpg

2026-01-19 14:24:05 UTC

Paul Klee. The Last Still Life, 1940.
He died within months of the completion of this work, and today I learned that his tombstone is engraved with his credo:
"I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, but still not close enough."
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/922/196/280/287/634/original/081f00cc7e53fb00.jpg

2026-01-15 06:41:28 UTC

Release the Epstein Files.

2026-01-13 09:48:42 UTC

Please give Scrivener a free trial. I have this one writer friend who put it off for almost 2 years but after all my begging she finally relented last summer. Now she's a non-stop torrent of praise and thanksgiving, telling me how grateful she is for the recommendation. I didn't do anything except say what I had found: a writing program made for writers. (By the way, she's discovered several features I never knew about, and shared back with me.)
#Writing #Scrivener

2026-01-12 07:18:07 UTC

Please Alt-Text your own images, thanks.
Searchability, translation, inclusion, explication.
#AltText

2026-01-10 11:52:48 UTC

EPSTEIN.

2026-01-10 07:20:32 UTC

When someone cuts down a fruit tree before its (relatively short) course of life is run, it makes me sad as few other things can. I know this comes from my grandmother, a specific event of her childhood, wherein the TVA seized and cleared their peach orchard for flooding just as it came into maturity. I've written about it, carried it as a myth, considered it from every angle. Those trees would have died naturally in 20 years, but in her grief they lived 70 more, and now on in me much longer.

2026-01-09 15:08:43 UTC

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leave X now!

2026-01-09 09:18:39 UTC

The capitalists themselves have dismantled the capitalist project. They've stolen too much.
If you have a day job, count up your past labor and costs and compare that to what you have today, and if what you have is secure, both investments and stable currency (they're undermining the money). If you are net in debt then the answer is obvious. But even if you are solvent, add in quality of life, like time, housing, food supply, and healthcare. You can see they've extracted you like a stripmine.

2026-01-05 13:00:18 UTC

Please boost.
Once again, I'm putting out the call: Anyone with contacts among Mexican, Central/S. American, Caribbean or Indigenous voices who may want to contribute (paid) to an anthology on poison plants focusing this issue on DATURA (prose, experiences, science, ethnobotany, ritual, art, folklore, interviews or anything else of interest to subscribers), please contact me privately. We are looking for Western Hemisphere material. Thanks.
Image: Georgia O'Keeffe. Jimson Weed, 1932. #Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/842/592/095/924/873/original/966688ed25a671d9.jpg

2026-01-04 23:01:53 UTC

Americans have tolerated too much at home without personally sacrificing anything to stop it, and now the deadly chaos is spilling over on the whole world, making it everyone's problem. Burning down your own house is one thing. Burning down the whole village is a different level of crime.
It's time to divest.

2026-01-04 21:27:37 UTC

As a reminder, "Nutella kills orangutans!" (And also a lot of other wildlife, too.) It's owned by private mega-corp Ferrero, "one of the most secretive companies in the world," and Ferrero steadfastly refuses to switch out palm oil in its products, such as Nutella, even knowing the environmental cost. It's a huge consumer. So maybe buy another brand of spread, palm-oil-free? There's lots.

2026-01-03 17:47:45 UTC

I'm assuming USians here are hearing it, but Europeans are enraged against the USA today in a way that hasn't happened before. Even normally moderate voices are posting things that I didn't think you could say in public. People are scorching tepid politicians and most importantly are calling for a Canada-style boycott of everything American, including against those who "didn't vote for Trump" but are now letting this chaos spill onto the rest of us through inaction. It's a palpable new anger.

2026-01-03 11:56:51 UTC

Let's please stop misusing the word Luddite.
Read up on who they actually were and how 95% of us would have agreed with them. In fact it might be time to bring back some of their tactics.

2025-12-30 21:10:44 UTC

A day's little treasures.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/550/992/075/425/original/f270ecfd80620069.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/550/914/968/616/original/4c5d5fc2f4854347.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/550/961/666/646/original/d641eba8c3aada58.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/810/551/018/759/614/original/2e8c7c53934a52f1.jpg

2025-12-28 20:56:43 UTC

Scrapin' around the VR.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/175/852/384/540/original/80499bd71f7fb80e.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/176/061/307/631/original/b501671bdb50ec36.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/176/230/675/553/original/b298e2ac5eba6c81.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/799/176/392/415/176/original/edf9d4399830dd25.jpg

2025-12-25 20:37:48 UTC

Paul Klee. Bird Wandering Off, 1926.
It's been a very foggy, wandering-off sort of day.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/782/105/821/905/760/original/db107410614cc715.webp

2025-12-23 14:24:24 UTC

Ahmed Yacoubi. King Solomon's Ring, 1963.
Here's another artist whose life story reads like an adventure novel. He was discovered in Morocco by Paul & Jane Bowles, and then shot like a rocket through artistic high society worldwide. Of all his works which I've seen, this is the one that arrests me. Are these roots, shrapnel, vessels, neurons, heaped laundry? As the Wikipedia article mentions, he had a secret way of layering paint to create extraordinary depth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Yacoubi
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/769/287/588/907/393/original/3d0e2556dfeb3bcf.webp

2025-12-20 08:32:18 UTC

Vuillard. Friends Around the Table, 1909.
1. There's no substitute for seeing art in person. Particularly as optical light & color theory pervaded painting, reproductions become harder and harder to get just right. Here's a painting that looks totally different depending on slight color adjustments in the repro.
2. We tend to miss it today but he was obsessed with 'modern' lighting in his designs, and I think that's the source of those pale blank glares often seen in this period.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/750/917/427/684/536/original/09e39b005b152176.jpg
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/750/917/447/135/659/original/db763e1719c1ef70.jpg

2025-12-19 17:24:04 UTC

Where is all the Crème de Pruneaux disappearing to? It used to be cheap as dirt and in every store, but now I can barely find it.
Young people today don't eat prune cream?? I consider it a basic food group! Was it a generational glitch and I just happened to become addicted out of cycle right as the consumer-base died out?
I'm actually reading recipes about how to make it at home.

2025-12-07 18:10:36 UTC

All the shrieking "If you don't like AI, don't use it, but quit trying to control others who do," is actually an ancient debate. It goes back to Hammurabi's Code and the Commandments of Ma'at: DO NOT POLLUTE THE COMMON WELL. It's the most ancient law we have. You can't pollute the river upstream and call it individual prerogative. Watch how fast you go down.

2025-12-07 17:54:40 UTC

When I bombed the stairwell with a guerilla "interpretive" mini-Nativity Scene in an unused fusebox it was cool. What I did not expect was the retaliation... or cooperation? I came home tonight to find blinking stars lining the staircase and a small Christmas tree perched on the balustrade! I've been raised.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/679/558/998/962/690/original/dd07f208e7abcb49.jpg

2025-12-01 17:17:23 UTC

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I sympathize. You rest now! I'm watching it in others now up close, and it's so hard.

2025-12-01 16:40:32 UTC

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is that you? I salute you big! Big hugs.

2025-12-01 16:39:34 UTC

I can't help but notice that I cook best when I'm depressed. Why is that? Sure as shootin', when I'm glum I start churning out the greatest hits, even when I don't feel like eating them myself. Is it because I go slower, am less distractible, or pickier? Or maybe it's an evolutionary adaptation to keep good friends close through hard times. They are eating well lately, with lots of warm smiles returning with the tupperware. That helps.

2025-12-01 16:28:10 UTC

Americans are missing the cries of pain from public school teachers right now, and from what I can see it means they are quitting in droves, starting with the best first - from physical endangerment, lack of pay, and burnout from struggling in the middle against arbitrary and constantly changing metrics on the one hand and parents who never take their side on the other. It's a sad situation. There's no more important profession in the world and they're valued lower than just about anyone.

2025-12-01 09:59:53 UTC

I started out trying to distinguish Greek Revival from Edwardian, soon got caught up in the history of English landscaping, and well, this seemed more interesting by far:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%27s_List_of_Covent_Garden_Ladies

2025-11-29 18:52:30 UTC

YouTube is Google. We have to get off it. All of it.

2025-11-28 08:55:02 UTC

You know that Umberto Eco character in The Name of the Rose who speaks in many different Romance languages at once, all jumbled up? That's what it sounds like in our house every day: Poor-Man's Esperanto.
Thus fresh out of the gate this morning:
"Don' not mettre them boxes di cartone per il mio Presepe in your poubelle no anymore - merde, once again one time ho bisogno di all of them tutti !"
"Ahaokay. I'm agree."

2025-11-26 19:55:52 UTC

As an American I was never charged extra at any park worldwide for being a foreigner.

2025-11-25 17:49:31 UTC

Last night I didn't get to walk until after dark, robed all in black, hooded like a monk. The village also seemed from another era, with medieval streets, clanging bells, Napoleonic walls and foggy creek. I went down to the cemetery just meaning to turn around, but then I peeked inside. To my surprise each grave held a flickering electric flame in the cold darkness. I stood there a long time, the only living soul to see the show. It seems wasteful to illuminate the dead, but the urge is ancient.

2025-11-25 09:55:14 UTC

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it came from this excellent article last week:
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie

2025-11-25 08:59:24 UTC

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yes yes yes. These are exactly the lessons I hope we can all remember. All of that is still available if we just refuse to go back to their 'normal'.

2025-11-25 08:25:49 UTC

I hate covid and don't believe it's over, but I want to say what's getting lost to history:
I'm grateful for the lockdowns in 2020. I spent months in seclusion and came out with the clearest mind I've ever had. In my case it was a blissful reset, however shadowed in fear and even as it wrecked my business.
It proved that whenever we want to, we can change the economy. It can be changed overnight. It already was. Neoliberal excuses are unmasked. It's one reason they support mass amnesia since.

2025-11-24 14:34:22 UTC

So many toots I want to boost
but they don't do their own alt-text
and I'm tired!
#AltText

2025-11-23 08:40:43 UTC

Wyeth. Wind from the Sea, 1948.
In my opinion, he was the undisputed master of framing: No sooner do you start to question why than you are spiraling into his vortex and he owns you. Again.
#Painting
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/598/095/266/548/479/original/7cf963b4432ecdc5.jpg

2025-11-22 16:29:46 UTC

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just WOWeeeeeee. Thank you!

2025-11-20 17:11:55 UTC

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we keep looking. You are in a mind-blowing period. I hope there are sparks of pleasure too.

2025-11-20 16:45:26 UTC

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and what a band it was!

2025-11-17 13:19:07 UTC

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Thank you for laughing along.
I'm going to call it staining the nativity scene from now on.
Plus 3 wise men and a camel.

2025-11-17 13:14:58 UTC

You don't feel truly old until you hear yourself saying over the phone, "Okay I'll be there, just give me a few minutes. I have to finish pickling this daikon, put one more coat of stain on the Nativity landscape, and swap to my therapeutic shoes... There in a tick!"
Just shoot me now. Bunions and pills.

2025-11-17 10:25:18 UTC

If you or your contacts living in Mexico, or in any part of Central or South America, have cultural/scientific/folklore/family/artistic or any other thoughts on the poisonous plant family
DATURA
(including jemsonweed, brugmansia, moonflower datura, etc.), I would like to talk to you regarding possible publication. Please feel free to private message me.
Boosts appreciated for greater reach!
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/564/546/332/683/564/original/3015f1d0b7ee9d63.jpg

2025-11-16 13:39:06 UTC

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it's funny you say that because it was a supposed archeology magazine that set me off. One of those livescience clickbait things. I swear they just recycle the same "shocking" finds over and over.

2025-11-16 13:35:37 UTC

If anyone is stunned, shocked, or can't believe -
Or if anything is secret, mysterious, lost, undiscovered, or hidden -
If it's in all-caps yelling or has exclamation points -
Or even if the headline is posed in the form of a question -
That is junk news.
Move on.

2025-11-15 20:20:07 UTC

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thank you. Love it. I'll do it and let you know asap.

2025-11-15 19:54:07 UTC

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recipes needed!!!!! Yay. Thank you in advance. (I grew up with poor talentless roadside cooks - they just did salt. But nowadays they put in flavors, usually very spicy.)

2025-11-15 19:41:17 UTC

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For those who may not know, boiled peanuts are usually sold out of steaming big buckets or cauldrons on the side of the road or in a truckstop parking lot. I've never heard of anyone trying to cook them at home, but Southern Living Magazine claims it's easy! So I'm going in.

2025-11-15 19:28:07 UTC

In order to get 4-6 Tbsp of raw peanuts for a Pad Thai tonight, I had to buy 2 kilos at once, already shelled. That's a lot of leftover raw peanuts.
Now, I've not had southern boiled peanuts in more than a decade, I'm guessing. Why not try to make them at home? Apparently it's as simple as soaking and simmering. All the extra is already in a brine for overnight. I'm more excited about this than I was about the Pad Thai, and it was pretty dang good.

2025-11-15 10:23:56 UTC

#Recipe
Boiling a large amount of baking soda in a burned pot will take the worst of it off without any scrubbing.
Bonus hack: Try not to burn it again with the baking soda in it.
I had occasion to revisit both these household hints just this morning.

2025-11-15 08:11:45 UTC

Did everyone see the fantastical Cory Doctorow truckstop sighting by the trashcan swingers yesterday? This morning several of my peers have blurted out "AA battery for what??" without further context and I haven't laughed so hard in a while.
I've been asking myself what makes it so funny and I think it's just a reflection on our collective jadedness. At this point no one breaks chew for anything raunchy. We're just trying to keep the threads together.

2025-11-14 13:33:38 UTC

I seem to be in need of lots of help from the Fediverse today.
Can anyone advise: I want to start a blog for a friend in a politically difficult situation to have an anonymous mouthpiece. Where is the best place to do that now? Not Substack, not WordPress? Ideas?

2025-11-13 16:43:13 UTC

Every day I distribute things from here to friends outside. Mastodon offers amazing quality and breadth, both. I forward high-quality content to lil old hippie ladies, trans programmers, a historian, profs, cooks, translators, a Hollywood scout, marketers, witches, Quakers, a physics teacher, decorators, activists, tech millionaires and a dog groomer. When they inevitably ask where did you ever come across this, I always tout Mastodon, but I don't have a single convert to show for it yet.

2025-11-11 09:37:40 UTC

At the end of my tiny weird little apartment is a wide wardrobe that's been screwed shut. In fact it covers a grand marble doorway and serves as a closet to the huge empty apartment nextdoor, formerly ensuite, which is the most spectacular neoclassical muraled domestic space I've ever seen.
I want my Narnia.
Now it's for rent. My whole place could be just my closet! They're over there banging hammers and who knows what for who knows who new renters, but it's mine. I need them to hear me: MINE.

2025-11-10 08:58:33 UTC

One of the smartest techiest people I know uses chatGTP and truly believes he's in control of it, but even as he praises what it can do "when used correctly," he gives away the truth: He is weighing its opinions and conforming himself to its suggestions. From the outside this seems clear as day, but this very smart person insists that he's as in control of chatGTP as he is of an inkpen when he writes. I think we're in very dangerous psychological territory with this stuff.

2025-11-09 21:03:15 UTC

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wow. Thank you for the tip on the building. I did look, and I will be looking many more times.

2025-11-09 17:18:46 UTC

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well true there aren't many but the smooth arcs of the back and the date! True.

2025-11-09 17:07:45 UTC

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that's my take exactly. There's an early 1970s BBC documentary that talks eloquently about the two kinds of art deco, sort of the two bifurcating directions the world went at that moment in design - and this was the backward-looking artisanal one that lost out.

2025-11-09 14:12:07 UTC

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y'all are the best LOL I've had all day. Touché. For those of us deep In The Libertine South (on all continents) it's simply looked exotic and erect