What's so great about this stupid ceiling?
The sibyls' musculature is male.
The cherubs are figging the Pope.
Putti? P'tui!
A scientist should not distill erotic godlings into “chubby baby with inappropriate wing ratio.”
The commission was forced on him.
He misses Cavalieri.
I prefer Raphael. His women look realistic.
About the Creator
Meredith Harmon
Mix equal parts anthropologist, biologist, geologist, and artisan, stir and heat in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, sprinkle with a heaping pile of odd life experiences. Half-baked.
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The Edge of the Line
Some days, I really hate my strange brain. I have this great idea for a movie, or maybe a script. Some typical white teen types go on a Grand Adventure in the perceived Wild West, and whenever they get in a pickle, it’s the POCs that get them out of trouble. And in every outdoor scene, in the background, there’s this stereotypical Mexican worker type having a siesta beneath a sombrero, lying under a saguaro cactus. But he’s the one who comes up with the sage advice or clever idea, and points them in the right direction, and by the third scene some of the other background characters (same people) are realizing that they’re non-player characters in some twisted reality. They try to ask the Mexicano what’s going on, but he’s always vanished by the time the camera pans back. At the conclusion, the Hollywood-acceptable skin tones go off to their acclaim, real or imagined, and the extras finally get to ask the Mexicano what’s really happening. Dropping the typically-used accent, he shows them all that the cactus is a transporter, and opening the door, asks if they want to go on their own adventure. The eager extras pile in, and the cactus winks out of existence.
By Meredith Harmon10 months ago in Critique
Standing While Falling
Quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche "He who wrestles long with monsters should beware lest he himself become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. Man is not destroyed by suffering, but by the meaning he makes of it."
By LUCCIAN LAYTH6 days ago in Critique
Angry People Click More: The Economics of Manufactured Dissent
(Ideas from the book The Economic Policy of Online Media: Manufacture of Dissent, Routledge, 2024) Abstract This article examines the formula ‘angry people click more’ as a core logic of contemporary online media and as a structural transformation of propaganda in the digital age. It argues that the defining feature of the current attention economy is not only the circulation of misinformation, but the systematic deployment of openly implausible claims designed to provoke moral outrage and sustain profitable engagement cycles. The analysis links Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year ‘rage bait’ to earlier lexical markers of epistemic crisis such as ‘truthiness’ and ‘post-truth’, and situates this trajectory against the older ‘manufacture of consent’ model of Herman and Chomsky. While classical propaganda in totalitarian and mass-media systems sought ideological unity through censorship and the Big Lie, the emerging Propaganda 2.0 model, articulated by Peter Ayolov, monetises anger by manufacturing dissent and deliberately populating the public sphere with absurd, polarising narratives. The article interprets this dynamic through the allegories of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Václav Havel’s greengrocer, showing how the move from fearful silence to permanent online rage changes both the psychology and political economy of propaganda. Drawing on Evgeny Morozov’s critique of fake-news moral panics, Frances Haugen’s disclosures about Facebook, and the documentary The Social Dilemma, it concludes that anger has become a tradable asset and that blatant lying has shifted from an authoritarian instrument of control to a market mechanism in a global ‘free trade in slogans’.
By Peter Ayolov4 days ago in Critique
The steps to losing a child
Step One: Lose a child. Not what anyone wants to happen and nothing you can do to change it, but you can go through steps to becoming happy again. You can go through steps to loving again. You can go through steps to become a new you because after losing a child you will never be the same person you once were.
By Tabitha Hinkley4 days ago in Fiction
Comments (2)
Lol, this was funny! Loved your take on this challenge!
What's so great about the ceiling? It encourages you to work the cricks out of your neck.