Pendant, 4th–8th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas

The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 Size: H. 2 1/8 x W. 1 ½ x D. 1 in. (5.4 x 3.8 x 2.5 cm) Medium: Jadeite

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/313021

Drinking vessel (Rhyton) in lapis lazuli and gold. Iran, Achaemenid, 6th/5th century BC

Gold earring with amethyst, lapis lazuli, and glass beads, Greek, 5th - 3rd century BC

from Timeline Auctions

by roksolyana_hilevych

Criminality is back!!! 😍 And she has already left a couple of presents, she has found a way to not-her-food. So happy to have her back.

Eichhörnchen (red squirrel) in Stuttgart-West.

Orange Oakleaf (Kallima inachus), family Nymphalidae, found in tropical South, SE, and East Asia

photograph by Peellden

The ship's mascot, a Persian kitten, finds a quiet spot in a special hammock. Aboard HM Indian Sloop Godavari, August 1943

you need to get it out of your mind that psychosomatic illness is just “making up symptoms” when it’s actually much more like your body is being actively poisoned by chemicals released from your brain

“Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up, quite contrary to my usual custom … at 12. After breakfast we sit talking till six. From six to eight we gallop through the pine forest which divide Ravenna from the sea; we then come home and dine, and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don’t suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer. Lord B.’s establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… . [P.S.] I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective … . I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley on the lifestyle of Lord Byron (via timemarauder)

(source)

The Amazon grocery stores which touted an AI system that tracked what you put in your cart so you didn't have to go through checkout were actually powered by underpaid workers in India.

Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped. According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales

A great many AI products are just schemes to shift labor costs to more exploitable workers. There may indeed be a neural net involved in the data processing pipeline, but most products need a vast and underpaid labor force to handle its nearly innumerable errors.

Video showing the hollowing out process! I prefer to sculpt solid so most of my pieces have to go through this to be fired!

Finally got these guys hollowed & finished up, can't wait to glaze em 🐺 ♥ 🐺

In the garden. Värmland, Sweden (April 28, 2023).

If people were too mean to you when you were growing up, a newborn animal will materialize inside your brain and it’s so so scared and shivering and it will stay there for years. Decades, even. And whenever you say something kind of weird but true to your heart the animal will tell you “Noo! You can’t say that! If you say that, everyone will hate you!”. The animal means well. It’s so so small and everything is so scary for them and it’s just trying to protect you. But listen to me. Listen to me. Whenever this happens, you can’t do what the animal says. You can’t. If you do, you’ll become as scared as the animal. You have to keep saying weird shit. You have to keep doing things the animal wouldn’t approve of. If you do enough things that scare the animal, maybe one day it’ll go to sleep.