AI Art And Humanity

HEY GUYS!!

GUYS!!!

FRANCE HAS REACHED THE REQUIRED NUMBER OF SIGNATURES ON THE CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE AGAINST CONVERSION THERAPY IN THE EU!!

ONE COUNTRY DOWN, SIX TO GO!!

We also need still quite a few signatures in order to reach the one million required.

As to date, the six other countries with the most signatures are:

Spain - 38.72%

Finland - 30.31%

Ireland - 24.86%

Netherlands - 24.15%

Germany - 23.54%

Belgium - 23.09%

So yeah, still a long way to go, but we ARE slowly getting closer. Don't stop now! Don't let this stay within the community, either, if you have any friends or family who are open to queer rights, get them to sign, too!

There was like a year long period where the only way I could make myself do the dishes was dress up like I was going line dancing, get a little wine drunk and play country music and pretend I was a single mom home late from her bartending job trying to be quiet so her kids didn't wake up. Anyway I don't know what they say about my mental state but I don't do that as often

Why is it always "born in the wrong generation"? What if this is the better option you got? What if you were born to be a 1950s lounge singer or a 1300s weaver and already had a lifetime of that, doing what you love to do and what you do best, and spent the whole time thinking "I wish I could do this in a better time, where I could do it more freely from the bottom of my heart, and not have to worry about the things that hold me back"?

You get to make soap with ingredients the soapmakers a thousand years ago could not have dreamed of combining. You get to work with fabrics an ordinary tailor could never have gotten their hands on. Write the gayest love poetry in iambic pentameter without having to worry of being tried for sodomy. Hell, you could have eight kids and bake bread while barefoot without worrying how many of your runts survive to adulthood.

You can draw designs for stained glass windows that the church would never let you, and instead of thinking how your talents would have been groundbreaking back in the day and how they are wasted now, you can imagine how a thousand years ago you may have been drawing the same designs, thinking "I wish I could just do this without having to worry about viking raids and the plague."

bird riding rhinoceros

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

— Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat” (Chatto & Windus in 1970) (via Thoughts)

“reasons not to kiss her 1.) this sort of love is not allowed. you are both too soft, and the world around you is all knives and chipped teeth 2.) no one ever taught you how to love. your war paint and scarred hands could never hold her like she deserves 3.) no one has ever loved you this full surely you would drown in it all 4.) she belongs in a museum, and you are merely here to gaze. look around you, all the signs scream ‘do not touch’ 5.) she touches you like youre fragile, and if you break you wont be able put yourself together again 6.) she is all bubblegum skies and chapped stick kisses, and you cannot watch the love run out of another persons eyes 7.) if you jump, she might catch you, and then youd have to watch as she tumbled through the dark 8.) her gaze is too gentle. you will not be the one to tell her that not everything can be fixed with a smile 9.) she is so good. she is so good, and you cannot ruin one more good thing 10.) you will not watch her crumble under the weight of your sins. she is too light, too breathless to be caught up in the dizziness of your heart reasons to kiss her 1.) she loves you, and her eyes are closed, and didnt your mother ever tell you not to leave a good thing waiting”

— lessons in listening to your heart, and not your head

on icarus.

(Attributed to Oscar Wilde//Sigmund Freud- Interpretation of Dreams//@meanwhilepoetry//Herbert James Draper- Lament for Icarus//Joseph Campbell//Hozier- Sunlight//Rainer Maria Rilke- The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge//Mary Oliver- The Sun//Vincent Van Gogh- The Sower//Matthew Ward- The Collected Stories//Florence and The Machine- Falling//Billy Collins- The Art of Drowning//Renè Milot- The Fall of Icarus//Hozier- I,Carrion (Icarrian)//Virginia Woolf- The Waves//J. Bengt- Icarus Flew//??)

Germany Gothic

- there are many fields of flowers. Pick yourself, the sign says. Leave money in box. Leave the money in the box. Bring a knife, not scissors for the flowers. Do not use the one supplied, you don't want your fingerprints on it.

- The playground is empty after eight. Empty. Don't be convinced otherwise. She's not there, the playground is empty.

- If you have a problem, do not approach the teacher watching over the children. Do not approach the mother of three. Smile and greet them, but approach the child waiting behind them. They are the ones truly guarding the children. They will help you. Their guardians guard something different.

- Some time ago, men in brown shirts stole people from their houses. These houses are marked with gold, but not by us. We only know not to step on the gold. The stolen people will not haunt you, the neighbours that watched will.

- This buildings is old, he proudly says. They survived the wars. You smile. You do not asked why they survived. The houses know your question, they grin. Ask them later, he doesn't know.

- A soccer field's lights are always on. People are always playing. Don't approach them; you don't know who they are playing against. Pray they win every night.

- The beggar is not hungry. Not for food. Be kind, and they will ask their price from someone else.

- If you are lost, don't ask the police officer. Ask the street musician. The oldest person in the city doesn't remember a day without that saxophone sounding through the streets. Music is a hobby for many species, and they know better than you where you came from.

- trust the fields. They have seen young girls safely pass. If it calls to you, answer it.

- avoid the people smiling at you, the ones with bright eyes and pretty scarves. No one has seen them here before. Walk beside the ones in grey and black who stare forward, never meeting your eyes. Trust me, they are watching you. If they do meet your eyes, they are telling you you are in danger.

- The bus driver is your friend. The security camera in the back of the bus is not.

-You do not talk to the person in the seat next to yours on the bus. Do not ask them where they're going. Do not ask where they need to get out. Humankind may have buried body language a long time ago, but it will serve you well now.

musings on July

"NW" Zadie Smith, "the Hands of Friendship" in Yerevan (@metamorphesque). "Jane Eyre" Charlotte Brontë (@flowerytale), Franz Kafka’s Diaries (@hungryfictions), "Summer night by the beach" Edvard Munch, "A Magic Mountain" Czeslaw Milosz (tr by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee), "Answer July" Emily Dickinson, "Four Sunflowers Gone to Seed" Vincent van Gogh, The Diaries of Franz Kafka (@shisasan)

blood in the water 🩸