Auto Mechanics Pose Dramatically To Recreate Renaissance Paintings

Retail Gothic

There seems to be a new worker every week, but they rarely ever stay for more than a few shifts. What is driving them away? Do they know the truth?

"Come back when the manager is here." You tell them. You do not know who the manager is. You do not know when the manager will be here. You do not know what the manager is. It is better off that way.

There is a new product on display. You dont know what it is. Nobody knows what it is. Nobody knows where it came from. There is no record of it being shipped. You leave it on display. You know that if you take it down, it will return. You know the truth.

You feel like you have been working for hours and hours. Your feet feel like anchors and your soul begins to crumble into the void. You smile at a customer. It has only been 40 minutes.

Everytime you leave the store, you leave a piece of your soul behind. This is how they train you to be customer friendly. This is the truth.

"I'll go grab my supervisor." You say. You go to look for her but you cant find her. When you return, she is standing where you once were with a smile on her face. You dont remember what you needed her for. She is still smiling.

When your shift ends, it is dark out. It is noon. The cold wind blows and the snow begins to fall. It is summer. The store has stolen the final piece of your soul. You begin to crumble.

You do not know what time it is anymore. The clocks will not give you answers. They do not want you to know the truth.

A customer begins to tell you a story as you scan their items. The story takes place in 1982. It is 2020. They dont look as old as they should. Their eyes are so bright. Their teeth are so white and plentiful. Why are there so many teeth? What is the story about?

Your coworker starts to tell you a story one day but never gets to finish it. You ask her about it the next day. She says she wasnt here yesterday. You weren't there yesterday either.

You become lost in the aisles. No matter which direction you turn, you end up down another aisle. You turn left and end up in the back room. The store is now closed.

Theres another customer. Theres always another customer. You know better than to look them in the eyes. They can smell your fear. You hope they leave soon. The store is now closed.

You do not remember life before you worked here. You do not remember where you are. You do not remember your name. You look down at the name tag. It is not your name. You cannot tell them what you know.

"The store is now closed." You tell the customer. You can see the desperation in their eyes. You cannot tell what they want or what they are running from. You dont want to know.

The radio has played the same song four times now. You tell your coworker. They say there is no music playing. You know the truth. You know too much.

The store is now closed.

---

Now that college students no longer have access to their libraries in the same way we used to and have to do most of our learning at home it would be just terrible if we all knew about https://1lib.eu/ a website which has books on basically every topic ever available for free including college textbooks. Imagine if people were researching their thesis without paying for it. 

DO NOT USE THIS SITE AND DEFINITELY DO NOT NOT TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THIS SITE, THEY MIGHT START DOING THESIS RESEARCH FOR FREE OR JUST START READING BOOKS THEY FOUND ON THERE FOR FUN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE INTERESTING. This would be terrible :( :(

Reblog to spread the word so that everyone knows to avoid this site!

---

Film Noirs you can watch free online.

The Letter (1940) / They Drive By Night  (1940) / Among the Living (1941) / High Sierra (1941) / I Wake Up Screaming (1941) / Johnny Eager (1941) / The Maltese Falcon (1941) / The Glass Key (1942) / This Gun For Hire (1942) The Night Has Eyes (1942) / The Seventh Victim (1943) / Shadow of a Doubt (1943) / Double Indemnity (1944) / Laura (1944) / Ministry of Fear (1944) / Murder, My Sweet (1944) / Phantom Lady (1944) / The Suspect (1944) / The Woman in the Window (1944) / The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) / Conflict (1945) / Cornered (1945) / Fallen Angel (1945) / Mildred Pierce (1945) / Scarlet Street (1945) / Spellbound (1945) / The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) / Leave Her To Heaven (1945) / The Big Sleep (1946) / The Blue Dahlia (1946) / The Chase (1946) / The Dark Corner (1946) / The Dark Mirror (1946) / Gilda (1946) / The Killers (1946) / The Locket (1946) / Notorious (1946) / The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) / Shock (1946) / Somewhere in the Night (1946) / The Spiral Staircase (1946) / The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) / The Strange Woman (1946) / The Stranger (1946) / Suspense (1946) / Three Strangers (1946) / Undercurrent (1946) / Born To Kill (1947) / Brute Force (1947) / Cry Wolf (1947) / Dark Passage (1947) / Dead Reckoning (1947) / Deep Valley (1947) / A Double Life (1947) /  Framed (1947) / Johnny O’Clock (1947) / Kiss of Death (1947) / The Lady From Shanghai (1947) / Lady in the Lake (1947) / Nightmare Alley (1947) / Out of the Past (1947) / Possessed (1947) / Riff-Raff (1947) / They Won’t Believe Me (1947) / The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) / The Web (1947) / Desert Fury (1947) / The Big Clock (1948) / Rope (1948) / Blonde Ice (1948) / Bodyguard (1948) / Call Northside 777 (1948) / The Dark Past (1948) / Force of Evil (1948) / He Walked by Night (1948) / Hollow Triumph (1948) / I Love Trouble (1948) /  I Walk Alone (1948) / Key Largo (1948) / Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) / Larceny (1948) / Moonrise (1948) / The Naked City (1948) / Parole, Inc. (1948) / Pitfall (1948) / Road House (1948) / Saigon (1948) / Sleep, My Love (1948) / Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) / The Street with No Name (1948) / They Live by Night (1948) / The Third Man (1949) / The Accused (1949) / Beyond The Forest (1949) / The Big Steal (1949) / Cover Up (1949) / Criss Cross (1949) / A Dangerous Profession (1949) / Flamingo Road (1949) / House of Strangers (1949) / Impact (1949) / Jigsaw (1949) / Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949) / Knock on Any Door (1949) / Manhandled (1949) / Take One False Step (1949) / Too Late For Tears (1949) / Trapped (1949) / Whirlpool (1949) / White Heat (1949) / The Window (1949) / A Woman’s Secret (1949) / The Asphalt Jungle (1950) / Backfire (1950) / Black Hand (1950) / Born to Be Bad (1950) / Caged (1950) / The Capture (1950) / The Damned Don’t Cry (1950) / Dark City (1950) / Destination Murder (1950) / D.O.A. (1950) / Edge of Doom (1950) / The File on Thelma Jordon (1950) / Gun Crazy (1950) / In a Lonely Place (1950) / Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) / A Lady Without Passport (1950) / Night and the City (1950) / No Man of Her Own (1950) / No Way Out (1950) / One Way Street (1950) / Quicksand (1950) / Sunset Boulevard (1950) / Walk Softly, Stranger (1950) / Where Danger Lives (1950) / Woman on the Run (1950) / The 13th Letter (1951) / Ace in the Hole (1951) / Appointment with Danger (1951) / Cause for Alarm (1951) / Cry Danger (1951) / Detective Story (1951) / The Enforcer (1951) / FBI Girl (1951) / He Ran All The Way (1951) / His Kind of Woman (1951) / Hollywood Story (1951) / House on Telegraph Hill (1951) / M (1951) / The Prowler (1951) / The Racket (1951) / Roadblock (1951) / Sirocco (1951) / Storm Warning (1951) / Strangers on a Train (1951) / Three Steps North (1951) / Two of a Kind (1951) / Affair In Trinidad (1952) / Beware, My Lovely (1952) / The Captive City (1952) / Clash by Night (1952) / Deadline - U.S.A. (1952) / Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) / The Las Vegas Story (1952) / Night Without Sleep (1952) / On Dangerous Ground (1952) / The Steel Trap (1952) / Strange Fascination (1952) / Sudden Fear (1952) / The Thief (1952) / The Woman Is Dangerous (1952) / The Turning Point (1952) / Assignment: Paris (1952) / Man Bait (1952) Stolen Face (1952) / Inferno (1953) / Niagara (1953) / Angel Face (1953) / The Big Heat (1953) / The Bigamist (1953) / A Blueprint for Murder (1953) / Count the Hours (1953) / I, Confess (1953) / Jeopardy (1953) / Pickup on South Street (1953) / Vicki (1953) / Human Desire (1954) / A Life At Stake (1954) / Loophole (1954) / The Miami Story (1954) / Naked Alibi (1954) / The Other Woman (1954) / Pushover (1954) / Rogue Cop (1954) / Suddenly (1954) / Witness to Murder (1954) / 5 Against the House (1955) / The Big Combo (1955) / The Desperate Hours (1955) / Female Jungle (1955) / Kiss Me Deadly (1955) / Murder Is My Beat (1955) / The Night of the Hunter (1955) / Queen Bee (1955) / Hell on Frisco Bay (1955) / Violent Saturday (1955) / Rififi (1955) / Les Diaboliques (1955) / A Before Dying (1956) / Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) / A Woman’s Devotion (1956) / Crime Against Joe (1956) / A Cry in the Night (1956) / The Harder They Fall (1956) / The Killer Is Loose (1956) / Over-Exposed (1956) / Please Murder Me (1956) / The Price of Fear (1956) / While the City Sleeps (1956) / The Wrong Man (1956) / Yield to the Night (1956) / A Kiss Before Dying (1956) / The Burglar (1957) / Crime of Passion (1957) / The Unholy Wife (1957) / Hit and Run (1957) / Nightfall (1957) / Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957) / Sweet Smell of Success (1957) / The Tattered Dress (1957) / The Girl in Black Stockings (1957) / The Long Haul (1957) / Istanbul (1957) / Murder by Contract (1958) / Screaming Mimi (1958) / Step Down to Terror (1958) / Party Girl (1958) / Thunder Road (1958) / Vertigo (1958) / Touch of Evil (1958) / Party Girl (1958) / Lonelyhearts (1958) / City of Fear (1959) / Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) / The Trap (1959) / Guns, Girls and Gangsters (1959) 

Nearly all the films on this list are American Noir’s, If there are any other Film Noirs that are not on this list that you think should be, let me know and I will add them, also let me know if any of the links are broken and l will fix them. Just click on the title and it will take you to the movie. Enjoy!

Oliver Hadlee Pearch photographs MaRock, Botswana’s leather cowboy metal subculture for i-D Magazine Winter 2022

What people think why i became a bookbinder: Oh she wants to explore her artistic horizon with those pretty leather bound books of hers. She even gives them out as gifts to her friends. It most likely helps her with anxiety or maybe she just wanted a more special costume made notebook.

Why I actually became a bookbinder: I just illegally downloaded and printed out several of my favourite fanfics and books and started binding them into books cuz I love reading them but looking at screens for too long gives me headaches.

---

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

---

ive seen some posts lately about drawing diversity with actually diverse features, aka instead of just having a black character, drawing the character with nigerian features or instead of just drawing a vaguely indigenous character draw them with features from a specific tribe/area and in any case i figured you might want to check out this site because its a world map where you can click anywhere and it’ll show you different human phenotypes based on region and really goes into showing many types of people. like im making a chilean character so clicked on chile and it showed me this

which pops up this and this 

its just a pretty neat website to really become better at diversifying and strengthening your character designs

---

suddenly remembered this poem as i was making breakfast this morning & frantically googled “poem remembered to buy eggs?????????” & somehow managed to find it & it utterly knocked the wind out of me just as much as when i first read it

video essays i love and think about a lot (mainly in relation to pop culture):

aaliyah, britney & the apathy of lifetime “biopics”

baby phat enterprise:  how kimora lee simmons pioneered 2000’s fashion

whiplash vs. black swan — the anatomy of the obsessed artist

born sexy yesterday

parasite — the power of symbols

hilary duff, lizzie mcguire, and the teen idol pigonhole

why this font is everywhere

it’s time to talk about the r@cism in dan schneider’s shows

a legally blonde fashion analysis

ghost singing: jennifer lopez’s stolen vocals and songs

the late capitalism of kpop

jennifer’s body and the horror of bad marketing

let’s get sad: a last of us video essay

video vixens got paid like rappers

how midsommar brainwashes you

beyonce’s voice is changing (part one, part two, part three)

explained: smoking and the voice

here’s what we missed on glee

how one netflix movie broke the entire internet

naughty dog’s game design is outdated

jeffree star faked everything about… well, everything

how we failed megan fox

mariah carey’s voice

token black girl: how tyra banks vs. naomi campbell was orchestrated by the industry

colorism in your favorite black sitcoms

that 80s show and the limits of nostalgia

‘us’ and the american dream: what it means

unraveling the madness of kanye west

life is strange: the worst best friend