Strange Women Lying in Ponds

As July gets started people on tumblr will invariably turn their mind to International Bog Day, and I want to get ahead of it and propose something.

Bog Day falls on the 4th Sunday in July, the 22nd the year the screenshot was taken but this year the 26th.

Given that this always takes off with the assumption that its the 22nd, I think we should split the holiday into two forms: observed and official

Observed will take place on the 22nd as usual, and we can celebrate it here with memes, shitpostery and bog awareness.

Offiical is for action and celebration away from tumblr. Make something with dolphin-safe cranberries! Find out about wetlands in your area! Visit them if open to the public! Sign up to volunteer with orgs that protect them! Donate to nonprofits looking to preserve them! They’re very vulnerable habits - ever more so in the U.S. after the devastating Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency decision from the supreme court in 2023, which limits the Clean Water Act and took protection away from the majority of the nation’s wetlands. The Audubon Society is one of the orgs working to look after them in the face of that, and Wetlands International has a fund you can donate to help monitor the areas used by migratory waterbirds, but I encourage you to do your own research and find ones that speak to you. It’s worth it - they are so important to natural world and the one built by humans alike.

She’s finally getting her money from that fucking scumbag!!!!

What Survival Left Behind, art exhibition for young Palestinians at al-Bareij refugee camp in Gaza city Middle East, Palestine; May 2026

Horse-head-shaped Bronze Chariot Ornament Inlaid with Gold and Silver, Warring States Period (403-221 BC), Wei State. H. 8.8 cm, L. 13.7 cm, Dia. of neck 4.8 cm. Unearthed at Huixian, Henan Province, 1951

Lynn Seymour as Ophelia and Rudolf Nureyev as Hamlet in rehearsal for Robert Helpmann's Hamlet.

London, Royal Opera House, 1964. 

Europe’s infrastructure is embracing the renewables boom, with one company determined to transform the continent’s railway lines into mini solar farms. Last year, Swiss start-up Sun-Ways unveiled the world’s first-ever solar railway after rolling out 100 metres of photovoltaic (PV) panels in between active tracks in Buttes, a village in the Val-de-Travers district. Originally planned as just a three-year trial, the railway was fitted with 48 specially-designed solar panels with a combined power of 18 kWp. However, the positive results yielded just one year into the trial mean the installation of a permanent system along the railroad track is now likely, Euronews Earth has been told. Are solar railways efficient? Solar panels are often installed at a specific angle to ensure they absorb the maximum amount of sunlight throughout the year. In Spain, for example, the optimal angle for efficiency is between 30° and 35°. According to a 2022 study published in Science Direct, a 34° tilt on solar panels in the Iberian Peninsula resulted in annual production losses lower than one per cent. It’s why sloped rooftops are naturally convenient locations to install panels – while garden fences, balconies and flat roofs will generate less energy in comparison. Sun-Ways estimates that the loss of production due to the lack of inclination of the railway panels is only around 10 per cent. Still, in one year, the project has produced around 16,000 kWh.

Maximilian Lenz - Puppets (1910)

Source details and larger version.

Miniature globe (circa 1780; England). Maker unknown.

Papier-mâché, paint, paper, varnish.

ask and ye shall receive: When I write in Japanese I usually also throw it in google translate to double check that I'm not using the wrong kanji by mistake, and two years ago it gave me very dry and literal translations.

I was doing it today and noticed it had a pretty strong voice added to the output

For reference, to give a dry translation I would put: Lately I'm into in Hanafuda. Nobody seems to know anything about it here, so they probably wouldn't understand my brilliant jokes. I guess you guys will never be able to understand "Mister November and the Scary Cave".

I have a fluent friend who is able to check my work for me and give me tips on hitting the correct tone (I was going for a comically casual feeling), so I'm confident that I'm expressing the feeling I'm intending. While Google is also hitting the same emotion, I really don't like knowing that it's assigning tone in the first place.

To check if it was editorializing based on informal grammatical choices, I formal'd up the writing to be more polite and remove any non-standard vocabulary.

What do you mean I'm just using the browser versi-

Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice:

Last week, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and xenophobic racist Stephen Miller attacked Democratic Texas US Senate candidate James Talarico with the level of class and dignity typical of MAGA. Responding to a boilerplate Talarico campaign announcement posted by the Democrats’ account on X, Miller responded, “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.” Miller later doubled down on Fox News, claiming that Talarico was “transitioning into a female.” Miller is lying; Talarico is cis, not trans. It’s also grotesquely bigoted; Miller is attempting to smear Talarico by suggesting that being trans should be disqualifying from participating in public life.

But this ugly attack is very much in line with the GOP strategy in Texas which has centered obsessively, and repulsively, on attempting to feminize and misgender Talarico. Rather than talk about issues, records, or even personalities, Republicans have simply started bellowing “WE ARE MEN! THEY NOT MEN! MEN GOOD! NOT MEN BAD!” over and over again in a toxic masculine fugue of bile and sweat. It’s a repulsive spectacle. But it’s also a clarifying one. Republicans could not make it much clearer that their party is entirely given over to bigotry, rage, and bullying. There are no issues to compromise on, no middle ground to occupy. The only question is whether women, queer people, non-white people, and indeed Democrats as a whole are human beings with a stake in democracy, or if non-Republicans are all simply vermin to be subjugated. Faced with that stark choice, the Talarico campaign, and Democrats in general, have responded by standing firm rather than folding. That’s a welcome change from early in Trump’s term — and it’s also a hopeful sign that Democrats are starting belatedly to realize that the only way forward is fighting back.

Everything is gender

Last week, Republicans held their run-off primary election. Incumbent John Cornyn lost; the GOP’s candidate is instead the disgustingly corrupt state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is so obviously unfit his own party tried to impeach him. Talarico, a member of the Texas House, is, by contrast, a talented communicator who has made his progressive Christian faith a center of his campaign.

[...] Paxton and the entire GOP have responded to this tough electoral situation by turning hard right and spiraling into semi-incomprehensible smears and conspiracy theories centered on the fantasy that Talarico is not a man or is doing manhood wrong. The big Republicans scandal moment of the campaign so far came a couple weeks ago when Talarico ordered a potato, egg, and cheese taco. An innocuous moment, you say? Well, yes. But every Republican with access to a keyboard rushed over to X to declaim that ordering an egg taco meant that Talarico was a vegetarian (he is not) and/or a vegan (vegans don’t eat eggs!). Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that Talarico “was not beating the vegetarian allegations” (why are they allegations?!). Donald Trump said, “You can’t get elected as a vegan in Texas.” Ken Paxton called his opponent “Tofu Talerico.” And on and on.

Other similar nonsense followed. Dan Weldon, a Florida congressional candidate, popped up to say that Talarico didn’t look like he could name “a single obscure wide receiver from the early 2000s.” And in his first general election add, Paxton claimed that Talarico was “low-T.” This is a common insult on the manosphere right, where testosterone is conflated with strength, resolve, and virtue. Not coincidentally, Democratic representatives, and Democratic voters, are often not straight men. LGBT voters and women both disproportionately support Democrats, which of course is the party that broadly supports abortion rights and LGBT rights. In contrast, Republicans are viciously opposed to both — and are even flirting with the idea of trying to disenfranchise women altogether. The attacks on Talarico are not, then, simply attacks on one politician. They are an attack on the Democratic coalition, and on the idea that women, queer people, or anyone who supports women and queer people should have any role in government or public life. Paxton’s campaign is saying that Democrats are illegitimate because they are not manly men, and that women and LGBT people are illegitimate because they are Democrats. Only manly Republican bullies are fit to rule. [...]

Go further

Democrats have belatedly but thankfully concluded that the way to deal with bullies is to hit back harder. They’ve decided that the way to deal with vaunting toxic masculinity is to point out that it is ridiculous and repulsive, and to connect it to abuse and corruption. This is all to the good. In addition, though, Democrats could take the Talarico campaign as a moment to recognize that there’s little point in trying to meet Republicans halfway, either on policy or on candidate selection.