No tech CEO or NYT bestselling novelist will ever match the creativity of a humble French postman who decided on a whim to spend thirty-three years building a surreal, majestic palace with the bricks and mortar of his dreams.

Couple of interesting additions:

1. Ferdinand Cheval tripped over a stone and was inspired by its shape, eventually stating, “It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature. I said to myself: since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture.”

Here’s the tripped-over sandstone in question, which explains some of the abstract design:

Oh, and also:

2. He tripped and started this when he was 43.

just my humble attempt at raging against the machine

i made a follow up! if this blows up, pls remember it is illegal to be mean to me. and i am a small artist you can give money to btw ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the physical media depicted: lucky leaves by krill, worry by jeff rosenstock, self titled by babytooth. i love to tiny doodle album covers :)

Please Stop Blaming Us For Your Strange Behavior is a mnemonic to remember the planets in the universe where they’re named Plercury, Stenus, Blearth, Urs, Fupiter, Yaturn, Streptune and Buranus.

WE WERE ON JEOPARDY!!!!!!!!!!

thank you for coming to my this #mythis

*gathers all of the people in the world who write the number 7 with a little dash in the center of it so I can study them like little critters and find out what makes them do that*

There’s actually a lot of history regarding the development writing systems and why there are different visual representations of numerals,

but the short answer is: it’s regional, and you probably picked up how to make your numbers look based on your parents or your primary school teachers

I do it out of spite because in grade school a kids detective story identified the culprit by saying NO American wrote their sevens with a line and I thought that was super flimsy evidence and it made me so mad I started putting a line through my sevens so the fictional detective would be wrong and then kept doing it for several decades since.

I do feel one can’t underestimate the “elementary school child taught themselves how to do this Out Of Spite” crowd

i do it (and also put the little dash in my Z’s) because my best friend (queer first love transformative life-defining early adolescent relationship stronger than the powers of time & space forever) wrote them that way

(to a gay couple) so which of you is the signified and which is the signifier

The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“

Just as courage is not the absence of fear but doing the brave thing in spite of it, patience is not the absence of irritation but doing the kind thing in spite of it.

Prints available in my store!

Art by Masumi Nagase :: Corvid :: Heart made of the moon

* * * *

“To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.”

-Anne Carson

Sarah Hubbard: Mountain Laurel (2025)

(Note for Athens/Georgia people: Sarah Hubbard’s quilts are hanging at the Winterville Cultural Center Gallery through March 26! SO COOL to see in person!)

Slow Fashion Brands - Compiled by Rebecca

one of my “special interests” in the past couple of years has been exploring fast fashion vs. slow fashion. it has been a long journey trying to find clothes that actually 1) fit me 2) look good 3) are made from material that is not actively shoving plastic in the ecosystem 4) involve ethical labor, fair trade, fairly compensated, etc

before i did this research, i really had no clue about fabrics or fashion brands. i used to think i had zero interest in fashion, in fact.

i grew up wearing walmart and thrift store clothes, and when i went to college i bought clothes from target and asos. something started to shift a little bit when i found vintage resellers on etsy and ebay… those clothes were so unique. but a lot of the vintage clothes were polyester blends, stiff, and would fall apart as easily as my asos clothes. i would leave them hanging in my closet and never wear them. i would wear the same old t shirts and jeggings every day. i felt like it was impossible to ever wear comfortable clothes, or ever feel good in clothes, so why bother?

it started with linen. linen is very comfortable and pretty sustainable. i was amazed that i didn’t feel the urge to rip my clothes off when i wore linen. lightbulb number one.

a friend let me borrow a nooworks dress, and i went to the store and got some overalls. wow. overalls. lightbulb number two. holy shit, you can wear overalls. you know how people say “not binary or non-binary but a secret third thing.” that’s overalls.

i realized i loved the bonkers prints that nooworks had, and all of it was soft, and made ethically. it was a higher price point than i was used to, which gave me pause. but then you realize: we’re not supposed to be buying dumb clothes every other weekend. and isn’t a slightly higher price point for soft clothes that you won’t want to tear off your body worth it?

so i started my research. i made a spreadsheet. the prices can be all over the place across brands, so i made a column for prices. sizes can be all over the place too – people always ask me “where is the plus size slow fashion?” it’s there. just look at the size column. people say “isn’t it better to buy secondhand?” yeah, it is. i have many links to secondhand sources.

if you have any suggestions or additions please let me know, it is a living document.

update jan 2026: i updated the spreadsheet again; took off all the defunct brands, left a few (greyed out) that you can still find secondhand / pre-owned.

also want to highlight this section:

*voice of someone craving even the tiniest sliver of control* i could make a spreadsheet,

i swear to god every day i am like, “fuck, why am i so sore and tired at all times forever,” and then, “oh right, got hit by a truck that one time. chronic pain is chronic.” but recently in particular i was reliving the horrifying moment in court when i got an “objection!” because the question was asking me to describe the pain and i did (probably inadvertently downplayed it tbh because i’m me, an idiot), but then i also mentioned, “my doctor said i will most likely experience pain for the rest of my life,” and that was the objection. and i mean, i get it, sure, from a purely legal standpoint – because i wasn’t supposed to talk about what the doctor said, i was supposed to talk about how my legs actually felt, to me, the person feeling the pain in the present moment. but you know what? it’s been 12 years. the doctor was right.

even saying cost of living leaves something bitter in my mouth what kind of fucking phrase is that. vile

The old world is dying. The new world had that thing happen where the umbilical cord gets caught around the neck as it’s coming out, yuuuurk, no new world either. So it’s basically just gonna be monsters forever

And for the last time, you can’t fuck the monsters. They aren’t the kind of monsters you can fuck

Had it with all this bullshit grimdark worldbuilding just for the sake of edginess with nothing to actually say. I’m going to fuck the monsters.

Listen, buddy, I get it when it’s monstrosity-as-a-marker-of-marginalization or it’s a, a commentary on arbitrary constructions of beauty standards or whatever. That’s one type of monster, that’s fine. Very fuckable type of monster. But we’re talking about, like, the metaphysical worldly manifestations of imperialist warmongering and rapacious depletion of the environment and systemic racism and shit like that. And I mean it’s obviously not conceptually impossible to eroticize all that, you see people doing it, but it’s fraught, right? It’s fraught. Thin Ice. And if you’re gonna go there you can’t be flippant about what you’re doing, man. This shit affects people’s lives in real, non-metaphorical ways. When I was at CVS I just saw three or four anthromorphic personifications of the concept of medical debt pulling a little old lady apart like a wishbone

Super Mario Bros Movie (1993)

a version of Super Mario Bros. (1993) ripped by pointing the camera at the television and uploaded as a series of 22 videos each segment no longer than 5 minutes AS GOD INTENDED

im so piracy and library pilled that i genuinely just have to hit people with the ungulate stare when they ask me where a show/movie/music i recommend is available on streaming

the internet seems like a distant dream

whatever we are on rn is not the internet. It’s ads

knowing when not to open the comments is a skill

internet soft skills

• not opening the comments
• letting people be wrong
• letting people be wrong about YOU
• letting people have a bad impression of you (see above)
• knowing when your input isn’t needed
• spotting bot comments
• block button

blocking tip: you don’t have to wait to have a negative interaction with someone to block them. you can block them without ever interacting with them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone being rude to someone else and preemptively blocked them

fuck yeah. another incident of typing paragraphs and then deleting them because i realized once again that i don’t need to release my dumbass opinion(s) upon the world

Image ID: text post by GG Allin Turing @/dubsteppenwolf:

tired of “your feelings are valid” discourse. sometimes my feelings are dumber than dogshit and I have a responsibility to get a grip.

you: suck my dick
me, an intellectual: inhale my richard

here it is! the post that started a “me, an intellectual” hell frenzy, and is officially ⭐ the worst post of 2016 ⭐

Rare Achievement Unlocked:

Irrevocable Linguistic Harm

Create a memetic phrase that still sees use for almost a decade afterward

Pete told me this charming anecdote from his childhood that is the most 1970s suburban white raised-Catholic New Jerseyest thing i have ever heard lmao:

If you fart, a sibling is allowed to punch you in the arm until you can name five different cigarette brands, unless you yell “safety!” before they physically reach you.

there is this house i walk by every day on my way to the bus stop and it’s the most perfectly schizophrenic bit of americana: typical suburban midcentury ranch-style home with a neat & trim front lawn surrounded by metal fencing. hanging from a shrubbery outside the fence, facing the sidewalk, is a faded nylon yard flag depicting a doggie pawprint styled in the colors of the american flag with text overlay in wine-mom font, “Welcome Friends.” and then a series of metal signs zip-tied along the front of the fence: NOTICE: SECURITY CAMERAS IN USE / THIS AREA IS UNDER 24 HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE / BEWARE OF THE DOG / NO TRESPASSING

Walter Iooss Jr. (American, b. 1943): Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, CA, 1993. Archival pigment print.

not to be all crimethinc about it but: can’t see the sunset because this bus is wrapped in an advertisement!!!

The black areas represent the remaining natural dark skies in the United States

I’ve been in the middle of the ocean at night and now live in texas and it is so hard to explain to people that no, they have not ever seen the night sky. It is so hard to explain to people that what they think is a proper night sky is fucking pathetic. A disgrace.

People talk about how you can’t see stars in the city and yeah, that’s true, but their concept of “seeing stars” is being able to make out orion’s belt.

So, so few people have see the sky in all its glory and it’s not sad. It’s a fucking crime. Seeing a perfectly dark night, no clouds, not a hint of light pollution? That’s a fucking religious experience.

The sky the vast vast majority of us grew up with is not the sky that inspired us to look up. It is not the sky that inspired constellations. You can’t even see most constellations.

Your ancestors looked at the night sky and said “surely, that is where the gods must live.” And you might be lucky if you can see hardly more than a handful of stars.

The sky is full, fucking FULL, of stars, and you’ve never seen them.

I remember the first time I saw a properly dark sky and was like ‘oh that’s why it’s called the milky way’ and promptly started to cry

When we were on a field trip to the middle of the red sea, I remember us all crowding at the end of the boat that didn’t have lights and just lying on our backs and staring

When you see a properly dark starscape

You understand why people wrote poems and made up legends and built rockets and said heaven’s in the sky

The universe is infinite. So are the stars

I’m trying to find a picture on google images to show you what I mean and I can’t find any

You think of the night sky like fairy lights on black velvet, but it’s not it’s not it’s like, like, dust in sunlight, like - I can’t find the words.

The stars are everywhere, like sugar, like glitter, like dust. You can’t find the constellations at first, not because you can’t recognise them, but because there’s so many stars you can’t pick out the familiar line of Orion’s belt. The North star has gone from bright familiarity to almost vanishing among a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million other lights. The milky way is a line of light arcing across the sky like a moon-trail on water only infinitely, infinitely bigger.

And for the first time in your life you’ll understand why people call it a dome, because it is, it’s three dimensional in exactly the way a city skyscape isn’t.

You’ll understand why Luthien Tinúviel danced under starlight, not moonlight, why people in a time before we knew the earth was round still looked up and wondered and built telescopes and dreamed about the stars.

The stars are endless and ancient and infinite and you will stand with your head craned back and your rucksack forgotten at your feet and you’ll feel like you’re falling upwards into that great bright sky like it’s calling you home and you’ll wonder how you ever thought the stars were beautiful before tonight when all you’d ever seen were the naked empty skyscapes of your home. And you’ll cry and you’ll spend the rest of your time there gazing up and wondering and imagining what it would be like to stand among those bright silver flecks

And then you’ll come home, and look up, and fall in a different kind of love with that handful of blazing stars to stubborn to be outdone by the whole of human invention, leading you home despite the light pollution and the clouds and the endless bustle of this shrinking planet.

this is not a shot from a space telescope overlayed behind a woods, or anything. that’s not the sky as kepler or hubble or james webb see it. that’s the sky from a dark sky park in michigan. that’s the view you are missing out on from right here on earth. that’s the view that has been stolen from you.

one of my best/worst hitchhiking moments was unexpectedly spending the night outside in the blue ridge mountains, my only protection from the elements being a single emergency blanket shared with my then-partner – which if you have never seen one of these they are basically thin as aluminum foil and barely big enough to cover one person; it’s meant to keep you alive not “comfortably warm.” we had caught a ride with a couple of van-punks from asheville all the way to d.c., but they decided while we were on the road that it would be nice to camp in the mountains. my partner and i were not prepared for outdoor sleeping at that point in our travels but the punks didn’t let us sleep in their van and it was too late to get supplies by the time they’d impulsively decided to stop. of course at the time i fumed at this great & hypocritical injustice (something something community something) but like, in retrospect, fair enough: we were the strangers after all, and it’s not like we would have died from exposure; it was uncomfortably chilly in the mountains on a summer’s night but not, like, dangerously cold. (actually i think they just wanted to have sex in the van.) anyway. the whole point of this story is that even though i always remember it as one of the most sleep-deprived & physically exhausting, lowest-morale, shittiest-mood nights of that entire adventure AND YET… there was the night sky over the blue ridge mountains, bursting with more stars than i’d ever seen in my entire life!!! shooting stars too! and i could see satellites moving! it was so amazing. impossible to sustain my nihilistic attitude beneath that glorious vision.

The Captain Howdy: “I Long for Kyoto” (1998)

Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.

Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.

That’s a haiku written by a poet by the name of Bashō in, I think, the sixteenth century.

Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.

A friend of mine told me a story about fifteen years ago, and it stuck with me. Back when he was in college, he had a friend, a woman, and she was obsessed with Mick Jagger. They were very close, and after she’d gone out and spent the night with someone, she would come back and talk to him about it. And for their mutual titillation, she would tell him about the sex. And she always told him the same thing. She would say that while she was having sex, she had to imagine Mick Jagger. She had to picture Mick Jagger. She had to pretend she was having sex with Mick Jagger. Well, that was the year that the Stones did their big kind of comeback tour long ago. And when the Stones came to town, she went to the two shows. She was an attractive woman—a very attractive woman—and really wanted to meet Mick Jagger. And that’s not that hard for a very attractive woman. She got herself backstage, she got herself to the green room, and she got herself the attention of Mick Jagger. And they went back to Mick’s hotel room and they made love all night. The next day, she came back to her friend and he asked her how it was. And she said, well, while I was in bed with Mick Jagger, I had to keep pretending I was in bed with Mick Jagger.

Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.

Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.

Even in bed with Mick Jagger, hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.

oops all outtakes // March 5, 2026