A photograph provided to The New York Times shows a glimpse of some of the changes underway at the F.B.I., specifically the F.B.I. Academy at Quantico on Wednesday.
This is actually hella interesting, bc in simple terms, tigers are extroverts and lions are introverts. There’s more to it, but that’s the gist.
Whenever zoo’s tried to put lions and tigers in the same enclosures, the tiger would eventually try to groom the lioness and play constantly. The lioness would lose patience and snaps at them
So basically what I’m saying is that you have a regal and refined gf who stands at the edge of a balcony during parties, sipping champagne
Then you have the other girl who drank all of the little flutes on the servers platter, and is now drunkenly pointing at her gf and telling everyone that that’s her gf and doesn’t she look beautiful I love her so much
So I had to draw them in human form???
You drew them in the corresponding ethnicities for their Geographic locations!!! Bless you, you have no idea how sick and tired I am of white human lion king characters.
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This is some of that top-shelf, straight-up, good shit. Bless these big cat lesbians.
I’m so sorry, that lion is the tiger’s daughter. No lesbians, but it’s a super interesting case.
Tiger Momma adopted the Lion Baby, and while tigers leave their mothers when they get old enough, lionesses always stay in the pride and help mom raise her new babies. So the lioness stuck around to help mom so she could get a good grade in Daughter, and Mom basically shrugged and was like ‘weird, but okay’.
The super cool thing is, the tiger with the lion daughter was so much more successful in keeping her children alive pretty soon like half the tigers in the area were all her babies. They left her territory, but most set up shop in adjacent areas. This was because her overachiever lion daughter also wanted a good grade in Lion Pride, and stayed friendly with the siblings she helped raise to the point where she would attack intruding tigers who tried to go after her siblings, even after those siblings were grown.
And I’m talking ATTACK. Female lions will fight like hell to protect their babies and sisters, even one-on-one against an adult male lion 50 pounds heavier than them, if they feel like they have to. So a tiger sister would see another tiger and go ‘no I don’t want to fuck you’, and her lion sister would hear her yelling and be like
It was basically an accidental experiment that resulted in a loose, friendly kingdom of related tigers centered around their mom and a lion, and helped show how successful the ‘build a pack’ strategy was, evolution-wise. Mama Tiger accidentally changed the genetics of an entire population of tigers because she had a daughter there to help keep her babies alive.
So next time some dude-bro crypto asshole starts talking about how survival of the fittest is really survival of the selfish, maybe mention how discovering the power of cooperation made a regular tiger into the queen of a tiger kingdom
your scent processing being so close to memory in your brain is insane sometimes you step outside and take a whiff and go “ah, it smells like playing pokemon emerald in my third grade afterschool program in the crisp september of 2006”
Context for the 19 year olds reading this, September used to be a bit cold
(Source: I am a professional/academic historian with several advanced degrees in history. I have read many history books and even written a few history books myself. I have taught about history books. I spend a lot of time thinking about history books. It’s at least fair to say that I know a bit about history books.)
Speaking of said history books, last night I finished Anne Applebaum’s excellent Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956, which describes in detail how Soviet-style totalitarianism was imposed on Eastern Europe (her focus is East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, but it is applicable to all of them) in the chaos and destruction after the end of WWII. It is an eerie and timely look at how an unstable and war-racked society can sink into the grip of absolute dictatorship on every level – and also why those absolute dictatorships do not work. The era of extreme Stalinism was resisted even while it was taking place and after his death in 1953, the regimes were forced to adopt a more status-quo system that nonetheless never, not once, succeeded in brainwashing every single citizen, forcing public legitimacy of their rule, or destroying history books, alternate narratives, outside sources of information, awareness of reality, and everything else that eventually led to the fall of the totalitarian state and the rebuilding of society along freer and more open lines. There is a reason that the authorities desperately suggested “more ideological education!” (i.e. brainwashing) as the response to every mild act of defiance, of which there were many. No matter how massively overwhelming the propaganda was in every area of life, after a certain and limited point, it simply did not work.
America in 2025 is also not exactly comparable to Eastern Europe in 1945 for many reasons. For one thing, despite its struggles and political backsliding, it has (as I have said before) a 250-year history of participative governance and constitutional democracy that is innately and unconsciously familiar to every citizen. The Eastern European countries – emerging from nineteenth-century repressive empires, short-lived People’s Revolutions, and the comprehensive destruction of World War II – did not have that. In some sense, they were a far easier target to become a fully brainwashed and docilely obedient totalitarian population, but it didn’t work even on them, and this book is able to describe in detail what happened, drawing on sources and people who lived in that time and remembered it firsthand. The fact that I was reading a history book about it kind of proves my claim that indeed, there were history books about it. And there will be history books about this.
Donald Dumbass Trump and his evil-but-not-evil-genius Project 2025 myrmidons are not capable, in any way whatsoever, of destroying either history or books about it. In the 90s, we also had an upswing of “the end of history!” claims, this time in a positive sense, where people really thought for some reason that the end of the Cold War meant all geopolitical crises were over and everyone would only have to worry about how to increase peace and freedom for all time. That sounds risibly naive to us now, and obviously it was: history was never going to just end for the better. It’s just as naive to think that history will also be forced to end for the worse. The world continued, for both good and bad. There were books about it. There will be books about this. Make sure you’re around to read them.
I wouldn’t say they’re exactly the same. Both are about revealing a truth the listener would rather not hear, but on what they differ is in how the listener reacts to the information. The scroll of truth showcases a listener that rejects the truth, whereas the Spider-Man one showcases a listener that accepts the truth even though it pains them. You can use them interchangeably, of course you can. But using the right one for the right occasion will help you make a meme that’s more relatable for more people
remember when teachers would tell you to fold paper hamburger or hotdog style. kind of sounds like some fake shit but just another example of burger centric american thinking
non americans in the tags doubting if this is true. you think burger is a fucking joke to us??
The fact that Fountain is pissing off trads over a 100 years later is so fucking funny
As an art major, while I know Fountain is a valid piece of art that accomplished exactly what it set out to do, I also think it’s one of the stupidest things. We have a urinal in a museum display. I have yet to see a work I think is dumber.
The thing I love most about Duchamps urinal piece is that it was so “low cost” in terms of creative labour (compared to say, a large scale oil painting or sculpture for example), but it’s absolutely FULL of rage against the traditionalists and the world at that time and it’s SUCH a statement, it’s like, “oh just a mass manufactured item with a signature” but the reality of it is so many layers of meaning and without understanding the history at the time you don’t get it.
It’s an incredibly clever “fuck you” and I love it
An old professor of mine, an expert in Duchamp who has written several books, has a theory. In part, “Fountain” was a prank, a personal “fuck you” to the organization looking for artworks. It’s importance cannot be overstated, and this importance stems from the fact that “Fountain” is /ridiculous/. It is enraging, it is hilarious, and it is very fascinating.
Aside from Duchamp’s readymades, I love “Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even”. Pictured below, the work invokes a complex machine, one my professor spent a great deal of time studying. Eventually, he reached his conclusion. My professor had been pranked. He believes “Bride Stripped Bare” is a joke about masturbation, hidden to all except those study it excessively.
At first blush, Duchamp’s works are stupid. Upon further study, they’re very complex. And, upon true understanding, Duchamp is laughing at you. To me, it seems the closer you come to truly understanding Duchamp, the more he slaps you in the face with a large fish.
Let me rage about “traditionalism revival” here. This is a dogwhistle.
As a lover of art, there are many complex and technically impressive works being created today, which both embrace different artistic traditions and break from them. To ignore those is to ignore contemporary art.
Here, OP is raging against conceptual art, which stimulates thought and challenges tradition. He wants his followers to believe that art has “degenerated”, because the West has “degenerated”. OP is intentionally engaging with fascist ideas of “degenerate art”.
If OP wanted to be accurate, he would seek to restore the Salon System, the Beaux Arts Academy, and classical training in the arts. The collapse of this specific system allowed for Modernism to evolve. Of course, that’s not what OP is talking about. He’s evoking beauty as a moral standard, telling his followers to “restore Western tradition”, to fight against aesthetic “degeneracy” in culture.
(By the way, Duchamp is commenting ON MODERNISM with “Fountain”. Duchamp submitted the work to the Society of Independent Artists’ salon in New York, who would accept any work by any artist, for a small fee. In part, Duchamp is saying, “Is this what you Modernists want? A urinal? Look me in the eyes and prove this is not art.”
If OP dared to use his brain, perhaps he would agree with Duchamp here.)
The thing is that it isn’t even a urinal! It doesn’t match any model manufactured at the time. Also Duchamp was an accomplished ceramicist. It’s likely that he made the sculpture and absolutely everyone is like “I know what a urinal looks like. This is sufficiently urinal-shaped for me to assume it is one without looking at it closely!”
Duchamp had other readymades, like his snow shovel, where if you actually look at the photos, the handle is square and the bowl is way too flimsy. Why would manufacturers make a snow shovel with a squared-off handle? It’s impossible to hold! Duchamp slapped the “readymades” label on all these items and the hoity-toity art people who were so good at looking at things didn’t see it (probably because they’d never had to do labor like shovel snow imo, amongst other things).
Marcel Duchamp. In Advance of the Broken Arm. Museum of Modern Art. (4th Version [Ed.!!!] after lost original of November 1915)
wait what. there… what?!?! IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL URINAL?!? or might not be anyway. what the fuck.
if the dude seriously did that, his troll game is out of everyone’s league except Leader Kibo.
My favorite thing about Fountain (besides the fact it has been pissing off fascists for over a century, natch) is that the original was lost and he made a bunch of official editions to sell to various museums (after the original was lost, possibly on purpose).
And they’re different! If it was a real “readymade” he could have just bought some more at his local hardware store, but no. He changed them in OBVIOUS WAYS.
See the triangle of holes?
Here’s the one from the Tate Modern:
Oh hello, cross-holes. Fancy seeing you here.
SFMOMA’s edition has the triangle holes, but it also has a line of holes at the top that are completely different from either other version.
Here’s one from Moderna Museet. Line and a circular set of holes!
Duchamp definitely intentionally made these different on purpose. It’s a “readymade” but it’s not, really, each of these is a specific custom creation.
It’s not even clear if he made it! He wrote a letter to his sister claiming that a female friend sent it to him, and he just enrolled it in the art exhibit under his own name. There’s also a possibility that that female friend was himself, since he later had a female pseudonym of Rrose Sélav.
This whole piece of art is a fractal troll, and it’s a beautiful one.
amhrancas 