A POEM AND A PICTURE

This is allyship. This is how you do solidarity.

Report from early 1990s about the persecution of Kashmiri Hindus that led to their exodus from the Kashmir valley.

Stuart Sutcliffe was the original tumblr cool boy and get ready kids because you are going to fall in love with him.

This is Stuart:

he was the original bass player for the beatles and was in the band for a year and a half before leaving. In case you are wondering, he left because HE GOT IN AN ARGUMENT WITH PAUL BECAUSE HE GOT MORE APPLAUSE WHEN HE SANG LOVE ME TENDER (which is on spotify fyi) THAN THE OTHER MEMBERS DID WHEN THEY SANG.

stuart became very popular among the bands orignal fans because he wore TIGHT PANTS AND RAYBANS

ok so thats irrelevant buuuttt

ok so if he already wasnt cool enough, when the beatles traveled to Hamburg, Germany for the first time (which was long before their first record deal or anything of that sort), Stuart meet Astrid Kirchherr. and oh boy were they adorable together. she was a german photographer and most of the first photos of the beatles were taken by her.

example:

but you know it gets better.

SHE IS THE COOLEST PERSON AND WAS WAY BEFORE HER TIME.

I MEAN, SHE INVENTED THE ARTSY SELFIE

LOOK AT HER WINGED EYELINER

she was beautiful and was a talented photographer and was so cool it is upsetting to me.

tbh to me she has a real glossier-esque feel with the cute hair and the eyeliner.

she was so cool and i wish she was more famous than she actually is now because she and stuart are the biggest otp hipster couple i have ever laid eyes on and i wish THAT I HAD A STUART

ok so anyway, they were the cutest couple i have ever seen in my life except for when anna ferris and chris pratt were still together.

EXHIBIT A

EXHIBIT B

AND EXHIBIT C

the aesthetic that these two are giving off is literally so modern and cool and amazing that is makes me mad like WHY CAN’T I BE THIS COOL WHAT THE HECK

but back to stuart… he was an artist and when he left the beatles, he went to art school to pursue his dream of painting. he was described by a fellow student when he was young as his art being dark and moody (me) but if that doesn’t match his aesthetic than idk what does

he was always said as being one of the top students in his art classes. He tried to become an art teacher, but when he wasn’t accepted, he left the bealtes (after the argument) and art school to be with astrid. 

he never sold many peices and there are very few surviving pieces of art of his left but there are a couple. 

here is some of his art:

the fact that it says “elvis mccarthey” is my absolute favorite thing ever because HIS HHHAAAIIIIIRRRR

i wish i was as good as him oh my gosh

ok so i know what you are thinking,

how have i never heard of this dude before?

well i tell you…

when stuart sutcliffe was 21, he died of a brain ruptured aneurysm and died after he collapsed in one of his art classes.

astrid and the other members of the beatles were not able to attend his funeral and his father was not informed of his death for 3 weeks.

in a letter to stuarts mother, astrid said “Oh, Mum, he (Lennon) is in a terrible mood now, he just can’t believe that darling Stuart never comes back. [He’s] just crying his eyes out … John is marvelous to me, he says that he knows Stuart so much and he loves him so much that he can understand me”

The literary Sherlock Holmes was an autistic coded character before people knew what autism was.

The literary Sherlock Holmes was an explicitly aromantic character before people had a word for that.

Literary Holmes solved mysteries not merely for the intellectual stimulation but also out of a genuine desire to do good. He cared deeply about every client. HE WAS NOT A HIGH-FUNCTIONING SOCIOPATH! He could definitely be insensitive and blunt but he was not callous or unfeeling.

Literary Sherlock threatened to beat a guy who was being creepy with his own stepdaughter.

Literary Sherlock learned to grow past his misogyny after a woman outsmarted him.

In particular, he was always respectful to Mrs Hudson, never belittling or talking down to her (the otherwise enjoyable Guy Ritchie films screw this up too). In fact, they got along so well that they were actually a very popular ship back in the day.

Literary Holmes would NEVER call Watson an idiot. He was his only friend who he loved and respected, even if he did get frustrated with him sometimes. He didn’t need to belittle others to feel powerful.

Literary Holmes and Watson broke into a corrupt man’s house and witnessed him being murdered by a woman he was blackmailing. They knew exactly who she was but they let her get away because they were chaotic good like that.

Literary Holmes had HUMILITY: something a smug prig like Steven Moffat will never understand. He could be arrogant but he had a sense of humour and was willing to admit when he was wrong. And he was wrong sometimes because he was a flawed human being, not some gross male power fantasy.

Literary Holmes respected the working class and was often disdainful of the rich. In Victorian England!

Literary Holmes indirectly caused the death of a guy who abused (and implicitly molested) his daughters and he didn’t give a single fuck about it.

EMILY BRONTË, Wuthering Heights

In 1857,  Elisha Otis, of the Otis Elevator Company introduced the Otis Elevator Brake, now a standard component of all elevators. He advertised it by getting in an elevator, riding it to the top, and then ordering that the cable supporting the elevator be cut.

When the elevator is held up by the tension in the cable above, that same tension holds the braking mechanism in a position where it doesn’t touch anything. But if the tension goes away, a spring is released which causes the prongs of the elevator break to thrust outward, locking into a row of teeth running down the side of the elevator shaft and making the elevator completely immobile until repaired.

You can be trapped in an elevator, but you cannot fall in an elevator.

So, I’m taking U.S. History one and two over the summer at my community college, and the professor is this older white man. Naturally, this is history, and my first assumption walking in to the class is that I’m gonna be stuck listening to this guy drone on for two months of boredom. Great.

Within the first five minutes I knew I was wrong. So, so wrong.

“I don’t want you to be stuck memorizing dates,” he says. “I want you to know the story, the people, the conditions and reactions so that maybe we can all learn from past mistakes.” I was baffled. A history class that doesn’t require you to be able to rattle off dates? Not only that, there’s no homework and we don’t have to read the text book. The only things that are going to be on the test are things that come straight out of his mouth during class. He introduces himself, and proceeds to go around the room and greets every person one at a time. He will do this every day for the rest of the summer one and two semesters.

Then the lecture begins. I say lecture, but it feels more like story time in kindergarten. He begins to speak with such prose and personality that I forget this is a college course. He’s taken something that has so much potential to be mundane and turned it in to a book that I can’t put down. You bibliophiles know what I’m talking about. And then this glorious fucker ends the class in a mid-sentence cliffhanger.

Every class he carries on this way. It feels as if I’m there. Signing the Declaration, fighting against brothers in the Civil War, listening to FDR’s fireside chats, storming the beaches of Normandy… And he remains unbiased. He wants to make sure we see there’s two sides to every story; understand the conditions that lead to those reactions.

We took a test today, a week from our final exam. He goes around the room in his usual affable fashion, but rather than just ask how we’re doing, today he asks if there’s anything he can do for us. Most folks like myself say something along the lines of nothing, or I’m good. This girl next to me jokingly says, “You can buy me a coffee.”

“How much is it?” He asks.

“About five dollars.” She answers.

And without hesitation, this professor, this wonderful man with a love of teaching, and a love of his students, pulls out a fucking twenty dollar bill, hands it to her and just says “Go get your coffee, and bring me the change.” Then continues on his way like it’s nothing.

And it may be nothing. Maybe I’m blowing something small out of proportion. But in a world where it feels as if every class is just dragging you along in the gravel behind it, and the professors seem to just be going through the motions; to see someone actually do something kind and ask nothing in return is so refreshing and uplifting.

I don’t know. Maybe this is just a boring shit post, but I really needed to share my appreciation for this hero of a teacher. A teacher who after over 30 years of teaching is still happy with what he does.

The Mother of Science Fiction

Literally no one:

Not a single soul:

"I like your mother. You have your mother's breasts."

"Her breasts."

When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day, when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking–the first in his life. She told him that he would have to go outside himself and find a switch for her to hit him with.

The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.”

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone. And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever:never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because if violence begins in the nursery one can raise children into violence.(By Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking. Originally shared by Vivian Brault, founder of Directions, Inc.)