One If My Favorite Gifs Right Now The Blankest Eyes Ive Ever Seen The Lights Are On But No Ones Home.

So there’s this artist, Alex Schaefer, who makes a bunch of paintings of Chase Bank burning.

There’s just

so many of these

and I think it’s incredibly funny but

I just read this bit from the artist and

This is a "plein air" painting which means I set up my easel right across the street of this Chase bank in my city and painted it like it had caught fire. The police questioned me on the spot. Three weeks later Homeland Security was knocking on the door to my home. The question they kept asking me was "Do you hate these banks?" I can honestly say yes.

And I just think this is the greatest artist statement I’ve ever read.

For anyone who doesn't know what's going on in Canada right now (which, let's be real, is probably everyone who's not in Canada):

This week, a mass grave was discovered at a former Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, BC. The grave contained the bodies of 215 Indigenous children.

For people outside of North America, residential schools were places that Indigenous children were sent to, to have their language and culture stripped away from them. They were literally stolen from their families, and scattered across Canada, to ensure that they would be surrounded by children who didn't speak their language. They were given Christian names and forced to speak English. They were horrendously abused, and the survivors have been traumatized.

Hundreds of children never returned. The assumption has always been that they died. This has now been confirmed.

The school in Kamloops closed in 1978. They are now trying to identify bodies to inform family members. The last residential school closed in the 1990s. There is growing demand to search all of them, but the government hasn't responded to that, as of yet. Ottawa JUST gave in to pressure to fly the Canada flag at half mast. They weren't even going to do that.

This is the reality if anti-Indigenous racism in Canada. The residential schools may be closed, but that hasn't stopped the abduction of Indigenous children, let alone the hundreds of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Christopher John Rogers S/S 2020 Runway Details

Peter Allen Nisbet, ‘Surf at Salvo’ (Oil on canvas), 1995

Have bouquet and scale will travel

Joe Lucero, leader of Zia Pueblo fire fighting crew, United States Forest Service Photographer: Steve Lowell Date: 1957 Negative Number 111758

Aspicilia filiformis

God I love that the description I found for this lichen as “creeping.” Creeping suggests movement–and considering how sloowwwly lichens grow, it might just be the slowest creep ever. A. filiformis grows in terete, filiform lobes in tangled mats on detritus, soil, and old grass mounds. The surface is brown, gray-green or olivaceous, turning black toward the forked lobe tips (described as looking like little snake tongues which is so precious). Apothecia are rare and small, with a flat or slightly sunken dark reddish-brown or black disc. So far, this creepy, snakey pal has only been found in shrub-steppe and grassland habitats in the western U.S. One of my favorite ecosystems! Unassuming but teaming with a wealth of highly adapted life forms! Like A. filiformis, who I have probably seen before and just assumed they were a dead tumbleweed or something. Oops, sorry pal. 

images: source | source

info: source

Experiencing a moment of happiness, the grad student is immediately consumed with guilt.

we’re getting into BOOKS again, kids. we’re out here reading BOOKS. it doesn’t matter if it’s YA lit or elementary school readers or “”great classic”” novels or comic books or even creative non-fiction. we’re reading BOOKS and we’re having FUN with it.