tacet

Your friends admit that this causes some problems— it's way easier to fall victim to a false deal, or get stolen away now— but everyone goes to the fae market to buy their goods so what are you gonna do? Not see your friends? Go out of your way to buy more expensive stuff from the human market? Yeah right.

Also yes they still perform their light-footed fluttering dances under the silvery light of the full moon, but in order to get in you have to first watch the dancers perform two short plays about why you should shop at certain local businesses. Also if you want to talk about the performance afterwards then you need to trade them your True Name, your home address, your date of birth and your personal interests.

You do this so that the fae can this information on a scroll and give it to local business owners.

Another part of the deal they broke is that nobody may talk negatively about those businesses within the market walls. In fact, your friends say, the enchantment is so effective that it's very difficult to talk negatively about anything at all.

“I know it sounds un-good,” your friend admits. “But there are loopholes.”

“In retrospect,” another friend says, “I wish the town had voted un-yes to teaching the fae about money.”

“On the plus side,” the first friend says, “I hear the market is investing in one of those enchanted statues that responds to questions with deliberately ambiguous riddles, so long as you trade it your memories of secondary school.”

“Oh, cool. Is that why they're burning down the library?”

Aside from Duchamp’s readymades, I love “Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even”. Pictured below, the work invokes a complex machine, one my professor spent a great deal of time studying. Eventually, he reached his conclusion. My professor had been pranked. He believes “Bride Stripped Bare” is a joke about masturbation, hidden to all except those study it excessively.

As a lover of art, there are many complex and technically impressive works being created today, which both embrace different artistic traditions and break from them. To ignore those is to ignore contemporary art.

Here, OP is raging against conceptual art, which stimulates thought and challenges tradition. He wants his followers to believe that art has “degenerated”, because the West has “degenerated”. OP is intentionally engaging with fascist ideas of “degenerate art”.

If OP wanted to be accurate, he would seek to restore the Salon System, the Beaux Arts Academy, and classical training in the arts. The collapse of this specific system allowed for Modernism to evolve. Of course, that’s not what OP is talking about. He’s evoking beauty as a moral standard, telling his followers to “restore Western tradition”, to fight against aesthetic “degeneracy” in culture.

(By the way, Duchamp is commenting ON MODERNISM with “Fountain”. Duchamp submitted the work to the Society of Independent Artists’ salon in New York, who would accept any work by any artist, for a small fee. In part, Duchamp is saying, “Is this what you Modernists want? A urinal? Look me in the eyes and prove this is not art.”

Duchamp had other readymades, like his snow shovel, where if you actually look at the photos, the handle is square and the bowl is way too flimsy. Why would manufacturers make a snow shovel with a squared-off handle? It’s impossible to hold! Duchamp slapped the “readymades” label on all these items and the hoity-toity art people who were so good at looking at things didn’t see it (probably because they’d never had to do labor like shovel snow imo, amongst other things).

And they’re different! If it was a real “readymade” he could have just bought some more at his local hardware store, but no. He changed them in OBVIOUS WAYS.

See the triangle of holes?

Here’s the one from the Tate Modern:

Oh hello, cross-holes. Fancy seeing you here.

SFMOMA’s edition has the triangle holes, but it also has a line of holes at the top that are completely different from either other version.

Here’s one from Moderna Museet. Line and a circular set of holes!

Duchamp definitely intentionally made these different on purpose. It’s a “readymade” but it’s not, really, each of these is a specific custom creation.

It’s not even clear if he made it! He wrote a letter to his sister claiming that a female friend sent it to him, and he just enrolled it in the art exhibit under his own name. There’s also a possibility that that female friend was himself, since he later had a female pseudonym of Rrose Sélav.

and sometimes that message is

“die mad about it.”

"high support needs disabled people's accommodations are often seen as 'too much' and therefore are not met."

"neurodivergent people's needs are often dismissed because nothing is physically wrong with them."

"physically disabled people people often cannot physically access buildings and people refuse to do anything about it."

"invisibly disabled people are seen as lazy by society."

"visibly disabled people are ostracized from society."

Wizards have the same trust in magic that software designers have in software, which is to say, almost none at all.

“Are you fucking kidding me I worked in a reagrent shop for a few years I don’t trust any of that stuff. Who the hell knows what other components are in the ashes.”

“Yeah I was in the circle that made Alston’s Divine Circle of Teleportation. There’s some pretty nasty corner cases you can get into but the headmaster published it without us. I just take ships. It’s way safer.”

“I call bullshit on that Necromancer channeling spirits of loved ones. What did he say he was using? ‘Medium Conduit Ruinic Circles’? That’s just a bunch of buzzwords slapped together, and they don’t even interact with each other.”

*passes a scroll* *a few moments of silence*

“I think you missed a bookend rune right here-”

“GODS DAMN IT! IT’S ALWAYS SHIT LIKE THAT! THANK YOU!” *angrily scribbles on parchment*

Fascism thrives within liberal and neoliberal democracies.

Fascists aren't just those guys you don't like. Fascists aren't just people executing minorities in the streets. Fascists aren't just people building camps. Fascists aren't just white men with tiki torches.

Keeping Trump out of power doesn't keep fascism out of power.

Joe Biden is ideologically a fascist. So is Kamala Harris. So is Hillary Clinton. So is every politician that listens to corporate lobbies.

Every politician that engages in insider trading is a fascist by definition.

Beat that Vote Blue No Matter Who Drum all you like, but I need you to acknowledge that you're putting a fascist in power.

In fact, understand that you are putting effective fascists in power. Understand that your quiescence is what makes fascism function.

The notes sure are something.

It’s not a stupid nickname.

What if

Neither if then know the name

Because it’s neither of their cat.