i feel so bad for this fish because imagine being it and you just exist in the ocean and some weird terrestrial creature decides to give you a name that makes it sound like you committed medical malpractice

Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.

Also… art forgers like van Meegeren sometimes become a kind of folk hero. A swindler, sure, but a gentleman’s swindler.

I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.

“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.”” And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.

Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.

His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny. 

In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.

His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.

At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”

Just … the levels of con there, the fake photos and … wow. That’s incredible. 

That’s just rapscallionry.

Would you like to buy his wares?

"you've said that ad nauseam" yes and i intend to add more nauseam

Once I'm old and retired from everything, I think I'd like to settle into some specific pub and become known as the guy who'll offer unlisenced relationship advice/therapy/philosophical discussion in exchange for a pint, a coffee, or one of those shitty pub sandwiches or whatever they have. Whatever's in your price range. If I'm awake and done with my daily tasks at home, I'm keeping office hours at the regular. Ideally at one specific table that's never been officially reserved for me but where people expect to find me, and notice if I'm not there.

If you find yourself at a loss of what to do, not knowing what path to take, seek the council of the pub wizard. He doesn't have the formal training or qualifications for anything, and isn't legally responsible if it turns out that his advice was shit and got you in trouble, but the man is literally working for peanuts.

Woman murders man in broad daylight

I'm obsessed with Tim Drake joins the Batfamily early fics, but holy shit I just read one where Tim straight-up gaslighted the Batfamily into thinking he was their kid.

He snuck in, went to breakfast, said to Bruce "Hey, Dad" and complained that Bruce forgot to wake him up after Tim fell asleep in the Batmobile last night. And Tim said so with such confidence that Batman was like, "Did I forget I had another kid???" Freaks out. Does some sleuthing. Tim has planted all this evidence to make it seem like he's been living there a long time.

And they have to go make sure this isn't some time travel or multiuniverse bullshit. Meanwhile, Tim himself internally is going, "Holy shit is this actually working"

The Selkie and Her Family

Sound on 🐱🐱

black with low white spotting

Hims do a little dance

We posted this comic to Reddit a while ago, but it was suggested to us to repost it today. So we're doing that here too, and adding a page at the end ;)

One must never underestimate an opponent who does not fear death. An enemy who values your death more than their own life is unpredictable - you cannot assume that there is anything they wouldn't dare to do. Risk a blow to distract you, run right into your sword in order to get their own into you, tackle you off a cliff to throw you both into your deaths. An enemy that does not seek to survive is ruthless, they will think in ways so alien to you, that you cannot anticipate what they might do. The best defense you can have is to never make enemies like this.

The same fear and respect should also apply to clowns. They do not fear shame or mockery, they have no honour to lose by becoming laughingstock. A clown will not hesitate to look ridiculous, if tackling you makes you both look stupid. A clown does not fear losing their dignity for as long as they can take yours down with them.

Do not make enemies with clowns.

One underappreciated thing about visiting somewhere completely different where you've got local hosts to hang out with is when you've gotten used to seeing wild shit that would absolutely not fly at home, and going "wow, this would be illegal where I'm from", but you're chill because when in rome you do as romans do.

And then at some point you're all in the middle of doing stuff and you make that remark again, and your host just goes "yeah it's illegal here too, we're just straight-up breaking the law rn."

And you just go aye, fair enough.

i was going to do a rant about this before seeing this tweet but imma just leave this here

#been saying for years#rainbow capitalism isn't a movement but it sure is a fucking canary (via @runawaymarbles)

This goes hand in hand with pushing for only queer people to play queer roles. Which in theory sounds like a good thing to push for authentic representation when so much of the past stuff was bad.

Except the actual real world outcome has become queer leftists abusively dog piling any actor they deem "inauthentic" leading to actors being forcefully outed against their will before they were ready in an attempt to make the abuse stop. Including children. People have been justifying psychologically tormenting literal children for not publicly disclosing (and being firm and set in) their gender and sexuality in order to work.

In many wants it's set back queer media and made people just as afraid of queer roles ruining their careers and their lives as they were when bigots were doing it. Which is not an improvement to the situation! It's really only giving cover to people who want none of this to exist.

We could have just praised the process we wanted to see. Personally I love seeing Jim Parsons take that big normative sitcom money and fucking off to make emotionally powerful queer films with it casting queer actors whenever he can. But praising that will always be more constructive than bullying Kit Connor. If Daniel Craig wants to spend the rest of his career making charming gay detective movies about helping marginalized woman get revenge on abusive rich assholes, then I don't care what his sexuality is because it's still pushing queer media far forward.

We could have positively addressed rainbow capitalism by supporting queer-owed business. We could have accepted that mainstreaming queer iconography at Target (much of it designed by queer people who got to pay their bills making it) would make space for people buying that small batch t-shirt at Pride. It's not like people only ever buy one t-shirt in their life.

A closeted-for-safety trans boy buying his first binder at Target could have created an opening for the next one to be from Shapeshifters. Instead he may never get the chance to know what it would feel feel like to take the first step because the wrong packaging could endanger him and the (fair) price mightbe unaffordable.

We can't built perils into doing better. We can't keep calling nigh-impossible next steps"the bare minimum" and tearing into them for every imperfection if we want people to do them at all. At minimum that's a burnout machine. At worst it gives bigots leverage to maker sure we have nothing. Kindness and enthuses support of what we want to see happen makes way more progress.

Unfortunately many leftists are still so stuck in the purity-sin-redemption mentality, even when they surface-level reject Christianity, that instead of growth and change everything keeps getting treated as blasphemy unless it's perfect. Even though perfection is impossible. So the whole well is primed to be poisoned by the people who genuinely hate us.

hey don't cry. 7,401 species of frog in the world, ok?

IMPORTANT UPDATE: 7,532 species of frog in the world, ok?!

great news! 7,556 species of frog in the world, ok?!

hey don't cry, now there are 7,576 species of frog in the world, ok?!

excellent news! 7,591 species of frog in the world, peace and love on planet earth

guess what! 7,624 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

hey don't cry, 7,645 species of frog on planet earth, ok? peace and love on planet autism

great news! 7,653 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

hey don't cry. 7,670 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

new year new frogs! 7,678 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

hey don't cry. 7,683 species of frog in the world, ok? ❤️

hey don't cry. 7,698 species of frog in the world, peace and love on planet earth

hey don’t cry. 7,701 species of frog in the world, ok?

@markscherz how many of these do we get to thank you for again?

95 at present, more on the way :)

hey don't cry. 95 species of frog discovered by tumblr's own frog scientist dr. mark scherz, ok?

In a move surprising absolutely no one, JKR has now added asexual people to her list of people to mock and bully online. While obviously this is nowhere near the amount of vitriol she aims towards trans women in particular, it's continued evidence of her bigotry and yet another reason not to support or engage with the new HP show if her continued transmisogyny still wasn't enough.

Anyway fuck HP and fuck JKR.

Rotten arsehole still spread a positive image for something that helps. Someone will see it.