A Man And Woman Wearing Mongolian (蒙古族) Attire For A Douyin Trend. Ethnic Mongolians Are One Of

I finally got 9 Alyosha and Ivan pic to post hahahahah！！！

Dahlov Ipcar

Rabies is an incredibly lethal virus that kills more than 50,000 people globally each year. About 99% of those people who die from rabies were infected by the bite of a dog. This doesn’t mean that dogs are evil, or that they are disgusting, or that they should be eradicated from the planet to prevent the risk of disease transmission to humans. It does mean that we should do everything in our power to promote vaccination efforts, study disease transmission on a local and global scale, and find ways to prevent infected dogs from encountering and biting humans.

Okay, now are you ready to hear my biggest personal biology hot take?

This is pretty much how I feel about ticks carrying Borrelia burgdorferi (the bacteria that causes Lyme disease) and other arthropod disease vectors. Yes, these animals cause unbelievable suffering to humans by inadvertently transmitting disease, but that doesn’t mean they should be portrayed as evil or exterminated entirely from the environment. Ecologists have been speaking for years on how critical these species are within their established trophic webs, and how their removal could have devastating effects to many other organisms including humans. You can still be scared of or grossed out by these animals (very normal response to a potentially dangerous disease vector), but it’s important to understand that the best way for scientists to minimize the risk of these animals is NOT just eliminating them from the environment. No animal is evil or immoral for the ecological niche it fills, and encouraging a more nuanced understanding of these animals can arm us with better ways to minimize their negative impact to humans.

my favorite davids, ranked

here’s a definitive and totally subjective rating of davids

donatello: 3/10 honestly pretty embarrassing, but worth a mention. just your run-of-the-mill, oh-you-haven’t-heard-we’re-copying-classical-greek-sculpture-now david. stiff, awkward, and pretty dopey looking twunk. has the same expression of someone being told dona-fucking-tello sculpted this. can’t even hold his slingshot bc it’s too gay. don’t worry there’s a redemption arc on its way.

donatello pt 2: 9/10 fucking superb you funky little gay man. total glow up. a complete deviation from the norm by a well-known deviant. takes contrapposto to sultry new heights. look at this lad’s little hat and boots he’s not a nude he’s just naked. some people say goliath’s head is modeled off of donatello himself literally he was horny enough he said “step on me” in full fucking bronze. goliath’s helmet has little gay greek reliefs on it, not even remotely subtle. look at the feather going up his thigh and tell me u didn’t cross your legs when you did. commissioned by the medici for their palace, which makes it even cooler by association. 

verocchio: 8/10 ily baby a perfectly fine lad, looking at him makes me smile. his little dress is so cute with its stylized arabic psuedo-script border, and the floral pasties? adorable. something about goliath’s head feels a little disjointed, but you know what? fuck him. he’s not important. david’s the real star here in his little cheerleader get up. what really makes me biased towards this one is that the model was supposedly verocchio’s star student, the young leonardo da vinci. and look how fucking radiant he is! love it.

michelangelo: 7/10 technically this thing’s great. look at the fucking veins on the hand that’s absolutely mental. but all in all it lacks the overtly homosexual intrigue of some other davids and, frankly, i expected more from well-documented gay disaster michelangelo. obviously a classic but also makes it prone to being too over-saturated. i do love his yaoi hands though.

bernini: 11/10 the man the myth the fucking legend! bernini always delivers and this david’s no expception. look at that movement! the drama! the whole thing screams baroque in the best possible way with the dynamism, the momentary narrative, that cute lil scrunched up face. only complaint is that it isn’t as good as some of bernini’s other work but i’m willing to let it go for the detailing on the fucking rope goddamn gian lorenzo you absolute madman. we stan a sculpting legend.

Li Shangyin, from When Will I be Home? (tr. by Kenneth Rexroth)

i have a weird appreciation for Baroque artists, in particular Francois Boucher and Peter Paul Rubens, for depicting the human body in lush detail at a time that predates the standards for bodies to be thin and airbrushed with no wrinkles or cellulite

it’s just really interesting to me

so many the things women are taught to hate about their bodies—pudgy bellies, fat rolls, double chins, and cellulite—used to be ideals of beauty shown in depictions of goddesses

“I am a bit tipsy, leaves are falling, too” by Akiyama Iwao (1978)

What are your favorite Arabic poems, if you have any?

These are some of my favorites:

An Ocean Without Shore, Ibn ‘Arabi

Fragment from Al-Buhturi’s Wolf

From the Luzumiyat of al-Ma’arri

From the Diwan of al-Ma’arri

Reality, Rabia al-Basri

Love, Rabia al-Basri

The Enchanter of Dust: Psalm, Adonis

The Wound, Adonis

I Pray Behind My Shadow, Bahija Massri Adelbi

The Spirit Bows to the Will of Love, Munir Mezyed

The Manner of Sand, Mahmood al-Braikan

Exculpation, Khalil Mutran

Revolt Against the Sun, Nazik al-Mala’ika

Myths, Nazik al-Mala’ika

Who am I?, Nazik al-Mala’ika

A Stranger at the Gulf, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

An Alphabetical Formation, Faraj Bayraqdar

A couple of fragments from Sanieh Salh

Sorrows of the Black City, Muhammad al-Fayturi

Shadows, Wadih Sa’adah

The Strange Grief, al-Shabbi

A Storm in the Dark, al-Shabbi

A Body, Al-Saddiq al-Raddi

Annihilation, Muhammad Afifi Matar

Fragments from ‘Quartet of Joy’, Muhammad Affifi Matar

Mural, Mahmoud Darwish

We Will Choose Sophocles, Mahmoud Darwish 

Clouds, Ounsi el-Hajj

Smoke Bloom, Nadia Anjuman

Boat to Lesbos, Nourri al-Jarrah

Your body is my map, Nizar Qabbani

Iliad mini-comics, part 2 of 3! here’s part 1. sorry for the long delay–i’ll try to get the last batch done as soon as i can :’)

(featuring the subjectively gayest parts of the iliad, hektor having an extremely bad time, and a guest appearance by hadesgame hypnos!)

more iliad stuff

more ancient studies comics

Illustrations of Epic of Gilgamesh by Marek Żuławski