a. g. radley

Bear penis to remain on Bernese coat of arms The bear on the coat of arms of canton Bern will continue to display its red penis, the cantonal government has ruled.

finally some good news
www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/...

they're just constantly showing up places with stupid schemes and making everything Worse. truly the team rocket of Beleriand

finally read the Silmarillion after seeing a mutual read it, and it's very good! my main takeaway is that Celegorm and Curufin are fuckboys

only disappointing thing is it looked soooo much like there was going to be a fling between the MC and Johann (one of Agrippa's students) but alas, it never happened 😔

reading The Fiery Angel by Valery Bryusov and it's such a weird and gorgeous book. 16th century germany, occult stuff, love triangles with angels and human beings. always flirting with surreality in a way that is very compelling.

One of those moments where I'm doing research for a project and I really wish I was a real historian so I could get access to archival documents and stuff. Would love to read the minutes of the first SR Congress but they are in some archive in Amsterdam lol

I knew Ludwig II of Bavaria was a hikkikomori who built Neuschwanstein so he could read manga in peace, but I did not know he built a whole orientalist Moorish Revival-style kiosk with a peacock throne at Linderhof Palace.

Also the casting is amazing. Patrick Stewart is great as Lenin ofc, but I'm not sure I could imagine a more perfect Martov than Edward Wilson. Bismarck and Elizabeth of Bavaria's actors too.

I am watching Fall of Eagles (BBC show from the 70s) and it is very good. Why don't we have sets this lush, lighting this good, or acting this fun and energetic anymore.

last I heard burrito galaxy had funding and a team working on it, so hopefully someday they finish it lol

A PLANNED CHILDHOOD The Kindergarten was not only a good source of childcare, it was the first state institution of education that a child would visit. Seizing this early opportunity to convince the next generation of the joys of Socialism, the state ensured that more than 90 per cent of children were granted a place. The day was subject to rigid planning. Children were encouraged to do everything in the collective: playtime, meals and even the afternoon nap left no room for individual initiative. By Party logic, a good Socialist life in the community was more important than the development of individual abilities.

Just randomly remembered this description of kindergarten from the anti-communist DDR Museum in Berlin

The Immortal Science of Marcyism-Losurdoism A New Name for a New Thing That Pretends to Be Old

J.E. Morain has written a ruthless polemic on Rockhill, Losurdo, and the PSL. Please do read it!!

i saw some seriously unhinged posts by DSA members going around about what electing Mamdani would mean. i've talked to a lot of DSA members over the years, seen interviews with them, read their material etc. a lot of them remain woefully unaware of the limits of their methods.

not trying to rain on people's parade or be snarky or something but i hope some of the naive liberal and DSA-types on here are paying attention to this and coming to understand the limits of electing social democratic politicians if your desire is to seriously change things for the better.

Mayor Mamdani Breaks His Promise to NYC Public Libraries The Struggle Against Defunding Libraries Continues...

"In fact, at 0.39% of the expense budget, he has actually allocated LESS than Eric Adams did in his FY 26 preliminary budget proposal. This is completely unacceptable and detrimental to our public libraries."
prisonculture.substack.com/p/mayor-mamd...

i love democratic-socialistly brutalizing unhoused people

apnews.com/article/zohr...
bsky.app/profile/ag-r...

I feel like I'm in a good groove these days, I am genuinely excited about (and more importantly, have a clear roadmap for) the projects I'm working on right now, I just wish I got into this groove ten years ago instead of now lol

i thought the dots were wolf eyes for a second and got spooked

Every musician now is an industry plant or has to boostrap their careers by promoting themselves via youtube ads or putting their songs behind meme videos for the algorithm, and it's so fucking abject

I hope when we have communism we can bring back an online version of the "tv channel" and have like, curated music channels with their own aesthetics, cool bumpers, etc. Let a thousand MTV-in-the-90s-style music video channels bloom

Relatedly, and maybe this is a baseless bias I need to interrogate or something, but so many late 19th/early 20th century anarchists give off radioactive levels of sex pest vibes

How come I'm just learning that a leading anarchist in the Russian revolutionary period (albeit very controversial), known for promoting symbolist "anarcho-mysticism", founded a Russian chapter of the Knights Templar which survived into the 20s lol

It's very good!
youtube.com/@thecheesest...

What men think women want: some kind of gigachad guy or something (idk).
What women really want: nerdy guy with boy-next-door looks who knows the Deep Cheese Lore.

I started watching this channel on YouTube about a cheese store where the guy talks about the lore of different kinds of cheeses as he sells them to customers, and most of the comments are people fawning over the guy, talking about how much they love him, etc. (and they're right).

lmao

That's been a huge pet peeve of mine as well lol

This was a solved problem in Windows 95. Why are we retrogressing? (rhetorical question)