Category: Uncategorized

petermorwood:

the960writers:

warpaintpeggy:

dandelionofthanatos:

ceruleancynic:

warpaintpeggy:

some of my favorite vintage dresses
        ↳  green

these are gorgeous 

aaaaaand at least one of them was dyed with an arsenic compound

one of these days i’m gonna have to write a thing about arsenic dyes

Oh arsenic pigments. So very very very deadly.

If anyone who paints has ever wondered why you can only get “emerald green hue” when most other pricier pigments (like cadmium red and cobalt blue and such) are gettable as hue and in real form? it’s cos the pigment called “emerald green” was a copper acetoarsenite (please let me have spelled that right lololol) and thus…yeah. It isn’t stable, which meant that when it was used as a clothing dye or wallpaper ink (which it was, widely, until about 1900 or so–it was cheap to produce), it eventually made people in close proximity to it rrrrrrrrreal deceased.

This is why I am really careful at my job with maps that have bright green pigment remaining. Usually greens in that family react badly with the print ink of the map and like…Italy falls out of the page because it was green. But sometimes there is remaining paint and I have to be cautious. (See also: bright orange that might be mercury/cinnabar related, white that might have lead in it…) I’m not in any danger, no more so than I was at any given time at art college, but I do err on the side of caution. Because just SOME PIGMENTS MAN.

Anyway if you wrote a post about arsenic pigments I would read the heck out of it and be very appreciative 😀

I’ve seen lots of reblogs and gotten several asks saying “these dresses would kill you.” Here ya go.

the link up there fixed: https://thepragmaticcostumer.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/drop-dead-gorgeous-a-tldr-tale-of-arsenic-in-victorian-life/

“Drop Dead Gorgeous” is such a splendid title.

Arsenic was THE poison of choice (deliberate or otherwise) for centuries; it was even called
poudre de succession, “inheritance powder”

for its ability to speed up getting to the reading of rich Uncle Edward’s will…

Poisonous Printing Pigments give a new slant on “This book is cursed, all who read it fall ill; some of them die”, and don’t forget green wallpaper. I don’t know if it was involved in Oscar Wilde’s death – “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do” (he did) – but I remember reading that it may have been a contributory factor in Napoleon’s demise.

red–thedragon:

poplitealqueen:

Some selkie comes on land, right? And he’s a horny boy, just on dry land to bang as selkies are wont to do, but he’s not a dumb boy so he keeps his seal-skin close at hand, maybe in the form of a jacket tied around his hips or a cloak on his shoulders.

Anyways, he’s walking around. Looking and looking, and OH. Who is this handsome, dripping wet fellow standing by a mini ocean (the human skinned folk call them locks or something like that, our selkie boy can’t quite remember) that he has just come upon? The selkie is all, oooh, is that seaweed in your hair? I love seaweed.

And seaweed head is like, “Sure is. Wanna bang?”

And selkie is like, “Do I!”

But when they’re about to get it on, the selkie notices something strange. Seaweed head’s skin is sticky like glue, catching the hand he presses to his chest fast, and they appear to be walking *into* the mini ocean.

Luckily, seal-skins are easy to use when selkies have them close. Just as they’re disappearing into the dark ripples of the loch, the selkie transforms back into a seal. His hand turns back into a flipper, freeing itself from seaweed head’s strange, sticky hold, and he swims just out of reach.

“You’re the strangest human I’ve ever met,” said the selkie.

“I’m no human,” replied seaweed head. “I’m a kelpie, and I eat humans.”

“Well, I’m not really human,” explained the selkie, kinda weirded out because the kelpie just transmorgrified from seaweed head to a giant frigging horse with inverted hooves. “I’m a selkie. Do you eat selkies?”

The kelpie pondered this.

“I don’t think so?” He finally conceeded, and now he looked kind of uncomfortable. “Maybe you should go home now, weird little…thing.”

But the selkie said nah because this was exciting and new for him, and long story short this is how some kelpie gets adopted by a pod of selkies and learns how not to be a giant sadistic child-eating lake monster, and then the kelpie and the first selkie fall in love because why not? Let monsters love monsters. Cowards. Thanks for reading.

I love this so much

mdmshakespeare:

deliriumcrow:

kyraneko:

badaam-buffness:

gettysburgaddress:

inoue-takehiko:

evilscum:

deenoverdami:

I want you all to know that an Arab Muslim from Tunis proposed the Theory of Evolution near 600 years before Charles Darwin even took his first breath. Don’t let them erase you.

his name is Ibn Khaldun

Also, it was not the apple falling from a tree that made Issac Newton “discover” gravity. He was reading the books of Ibn Al Haytham, an Arab Muslim from Iraq, who pioneered the scientific method, discovered gravity and wrote about the laws governing the movement of bodies (now known as Newtons three laws of motion) some 600 years before Newton existed. Without him, modern science as we know it wouldn’t exist. Read on him. His achievements are far greater than what I’ve just mentioned here.

#no offense but arabs literally invented chemistry and algebra and we came up with the concept of the camera #the cataract operation that’s still practiced today was invented by an Arab #we created alchemy and the wright brothers used abbas ibn firnas’ findings and writings to build on to create a plane #I could go on and on and on #pls don’t erase our scientific history

I reblog this post every time I see it

We fucking replaced a Muslim scientist with an apple?

In the middle ages, THE place to go for an education was the middle East, or, failing that, Spain. The Muslim world didn’t have the same limits placed on scientific inquiry that the Christian world did, and since they were willing to look at more than just Aristotole and actually compare texts to the observable world, they had some incredible scientific and mathematical advancements. And street lights and toilets. I mean theories and algebra are great and all, but street lights and toilets. In the 12th century. Also medical advancements, and fewer rules against women studying. Hell, women *should* be the ones studying the female body, would you rather a woman see your female relatives, or some old man? Would you rather have someone who lives in the same kind of body, or one who has no first hand idea what the parts can do?

Europeans erased centuries of knowledge from the East because of fear. When we “rediscovered” it, we were still too egotistical to admit that non-whites could have been smarter, so we invented our own mythology.

Bring credit back where it’s due. Honor the true pioneers.

loreweaver-universe:

No, seriously, we always joke about how our sci-fi TV is just humans in rubber masks, and by extension how real aliens would find it quaint and ridiculous, but who says they wouldn’t get it?  The Zurgleplexians get to Earth and watch Star Trek and go, oh, yes!  What an excellent use of limited resources to create serialized fiction.  Oh, this one over here is both creative and hearts-wrenching!  Glorbin, come watch this one!

Of course Zurgleplex had some kind of Star Trek equivalent.  Storytelling always pushes the limits of what a society can understand or accomplish at any point in time.  It wasn’t until the mid-80s that we got what we’d recognize as CGI these days, but starships and space battles and weird aliens were being depicted all the same, with whatever resources their creators could manage. Give me aliens who love Star Trek.

dorkery:

darkestelemental616:

dorkery:

darkestelemental616:

dorkery:

dorkery:

Indulging in a veeeeery rare habit

She took even BETTER photos so here they are gaze upon them

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You look like the vamp character from those movies in the 40s and 50s who shows up at the detective’s office like “my husband is tragically missing and whatever shall I do, I clearly am not the actual murderer trying to throw people off my trail”

I bought an actual dress that screams Joan Crawford and makes me look even more like a freshly widowed young wife in despair and also in riches which I will photograph later

YES PLEASE

Sorry no make up, will post fully kitted out pics at some other point

ohhhhhhhh my goooooooooooodddddddddd 

dorkery:

darkestelemental616:

dorkery:

dorkery:

Indulging in a veeeeery rare habit

She took even BETTER photos so here they are gaze upon them

image
image
image
image

You look like the vamp character from those movies in the 40s and 50s who shows up at the detective’s office like “my husband is tragically missing and whatever shall I do, I clearly am not the actual murderer trying to throw people off my trail”

I bought an actual dress that screams Joan Crawford and makes me look even more like a freshly widowed young wife in despair and also in riches which I will photograph later

YES PLEASE