Paula Zago, Bon Magazine Dec. 2008

rise of the machines

I am not a woman of feminine frivolity or fear, but I direct these letters to you for the advantage of my whole kingdom; when you receive them accept me and the whole kingdom of Lombardy. I shall give you so many cities, castles, renowned palaces, and infinite gold and silver; over all these you will have an illustrious name if you make yourself dear to me. Do not consider me bold that I approach you first. It is permitted as much to the virile as to the feminine sex to desire a legitimate spouse. Nor does it matter if a man or a woman make the first move in love as long it involves an indissoluble marriage. Which can not be except by the consent of both. Fare well.

~ Matilda of Canossa's marriage proposal for purely political reasons to Guelph V of Bavaria, her second husband.

1089 A.D.

Last Chance

Ok Folks, listen up. The electoral college doesn’t vote officially until December 19th. It is extremely rare and almost unheard of for them to vote against the majority of their district BUT IT CAN HAPPEN. The Electoral College was made for exactly this purpose!  Remember, prior to December 19th, we have:

Court Case against Trump University Court Case Against Trump for accusations for rape and sexual assault If we pull together, we can swing this. We will have to be tireless. We will have to be unyielding. We will have to write, call, and march on every swing state that can have their electoral vote differently. We have to make our voices heard. Hillary WON the popular vote which means more of America wants her to be President than Trump. There is precedence for this to happen. There is cause. There is hope. With no state law against Pennsylvania voting against their popular vote, that’s 20 to go to Hillary. If Florida or any three other states swing, SHE WINS.

If we get them to vote different, we don’t have to worry about Trump or Pence because Hillary will have won. Until she hands over the nomination, she is still saying she is waiting for the official electoral votes to be made. 

We can do this. We can win. LET’S SPREAD THIS LIKE WILD FIRE ON HERE AND FACEBOOK! 

seems blatantly obvious that authoritarian fascists mostly hate transgender people simply for the deliberate infertility involved in some medical transitions & yet some women whom the fascists want gestating all those future soldiers are just plain stupid enough to believe the fox is there to guard the henhouse. yeah yeah sure "defending women". btw show us your genitals if you want to participate in 7th grade hockey because we have to protect girls. maybe if you had more than five brain cells to rub together you would be capable of reasoning this one out: they want to ban abortion for the exact same reason they want to litigate being transgender out of existence and you are the definition of a useful idiot

Two-sided amulet. On the front, the Raising of Lazarus. On the reverse are three lines of Greek magic words.

Jerusalem, Bible Lands Museum. Soft gray stone, 33 mm.

Magic amulets with Christian imagery were produced by an unusual workshop operating in 5th-century Palestine. Most of the amulets were crudely cut from very soft stones that could be easily carved with a sharp tool rather than with the drills used by experienced gem cutters. All were pierced to be worn suspended. The amulets generally draw on popular Christian imagery, including the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Raising of Lazarus, and Jesus with the apostles

Although some of the inscriptions on the amulets are in Greek, other inscriptions are badly blundered or in a pseudo-script, sometimes imitating Hebrew. The amulet makers appear to have had a superficial knowledge of both pagan and Jewish magic but were evidently serving Christian clients.

                          It is probably the dirty story of history: that Catherine the Great (1727-1796), the lusty ruler of Russia, was so wild with sexual desire that one day she was screwing a horse when the harness broke and killed her.      It's simply not true. Catherine liked officers of the Imperial Horse Guard, not the horses. Yes, Catherine also liked sex - one of her favorite toasts was "God grant us our desires and grant them quickly." This ruler of a vast empire had a dozen documented lovers (really, male mistresses) over her thirty-four years in power. But she had them one after another. This level of sexual consumption would hardly rate a footnote for most male monarchs; in fact, their virility might have been questioned. What was unusual about Catherine was how organized she was in selecting her lovers. She had a lady-in-waiting sample the man's prowess in bed and then she had a British doctor examine him for diseases. The young officer would soon be given 100,000 rubles and a country estate. No doubt what roiled foreign diplomats was that this woman, who was pretty when young, grew stout and gray, and at age sixty-two was still taking the likes of twenty-one-year-old Platon Zuboff to bed. That bred jealousies and rumormongering, and tales of horses.      Actually, Catherine was one of the greatest and toughest female monarchs of all time: this German-born princess plotted the death of her dotty husband, Czar Peter III, she expanded the borders of Russia, crushed rebellions, built gorgeous palaces, and was a generous patron of the arts, corresponding personally with Voltaire and Diderot.      How did she die? Catherine suffered a stroke on her way to the water closet and died on a straw mat three days later, with eyewitnesses there.

- "Catherine the Great and the Horse" from An Underground Education by Richard Zacks

btw now feels like a good time to plug the organizations that the kissinger death tontine accepted donations-as-submissions from!

☞ Cambodian Children's Fund ☞ Desafío Levantemos Chile ☞ East Timor and Indonesia Action Network ☞ Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Project ☞ The Halo Trust ☞ Yemen Relief Project

julia-turbo:

“This Victorian artificial arm and hand is part of the London Science Museum’s collection: “Made from steel and brass, this unusual prosthetic arm articulates in a number of ways. The elbow joint can be moved by releasing a spring, whereas the top joint of the wrist allows a degree of rotation and an up-and-down motion. The fingers can also curl up and straighten out. The leather upper arm piece is used to fix the prosthesis to the remaining upper arm. The rather sinister appearance of the hand suggests the wearer may have disguised it with a glove.”“

via BoingBoing

elon musk told jkr to calm down help fkfbkr

enchantedhunter:

I really like this one. Another Alphonse Mucha one.

I’m thinking CLAMP probably looked at some of Mucha’s stuff when creating Clow Cards for Card Captor Sakura. But I could be wrong.

via silver-rockets.com