'William Penn’s Treaty With The Indians'.

Benjamin West, 1771-2.

The following notes & quotes were taken and transcribed from Andrew Graham Dixon’s ‘Art of America’, episode 1.

The official history of colonised America [in the 18th & 19th century] would be a selectively edited account that glorified the building of gleaming new buildings in cities like Philadelphia, but it conveniently ignored the grim reality of how it was actually done. One of the functions of art in America then was to be a part of a cover-up, and a chief cover-up artist was a painter called Benjamin West.

West was a Quaker, born in Pennsylvania and America’s first internationally famous artist. ‘William Penn’s Treaty With The Indians’ was one of his most celebrated works, yet it also “pulses with the energy of a dark secret”. The painting was created to frame the history of Pennsylvania and the settlement of its capital city Philadelphia, “to frame it as orderly, dignified, just, compassionate and tolerant…"

West said that the painting depicts "the civilisation of the savage". On the left hand side of the group is William Penn, founder of Philadelphia presenting the Indians with a treaty. However, taking centre stage is a bolt of white cloth held by a generic figure of a trader, “an image that exactly recalls the adoration of the shepherds at the birth of Christ” and representing the notion that “the god of free trade transformed noble savages into civilised men, effortlessly absorbing them into the republic, a sanitised version of American history". The painting soon became the classic image of ‘the bloodless colonisation of America’ …. but it is propaganda, a blatant lie.

William Penn may indeed have looked kindly on the local tribes, but this painting was commissioned* some 50 years after his death, by which time the colonists and native Indians were locked in a bitter war. This was a war marked, on the British side, by all kinds of appalling skulduggery. On one occasion in 1763 during supposed negotiations for peace, the British representatives handed to the Indians a pile of blankets that they’d taken from their own small pox hospital. This was an early example of germ warfare and proved horribly effective. It certainly gives a really unpleasant twist, an ironic twist, to that bolt of white cloth in the centre of West’s painting.

The painting’s Wikipedia page says it was commissioned by Thomas Penn - William Penn’s son - in 1770 or 1771. Also mentioned is the speculation by some historians that Penn Jr. may have fraudulently created an agreement with a Native American tribe regarding territory and then forced them to vacate.

ADD INFO RE THE TREATY & WILLIAM PENN.

🎧 Funkwellen aus dem Exil: ”Chinas Null-Covid-Politik artet aus!”

Die Null-Covid-Politik in China stößt mittlerweile an ihre Grenzen. Trotz Protesten und Ausschreitungen setzt Peking seinen harten Kurs fort. Mit welcher Begründung das geschieht und wie lange China diese Politik höchstens noch durchhalten kann, kommentiert Dr. Karin Kneissl. In dieser Folge spricht zudem der Finanz- und Wirtschaftsanalytiker Thomas Penn, der die "Funkwellen aus dem Exil" demnächst gemeinsam mit Dr. Kneissl weiterführen wird.

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

I am fighting the feminine urge to draw fanart of the starlet divorce au (cue 'not strong enough' by boygenius)

I think that would be a huge slay… but alas I’ve nothing more to give for that au atm.

However I DO have some more Penn content so here u go

Happy Birthday Victoria Pedretti!

Licorice Pizza - 2019 - Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

"GROWING UP, RUNNING AROUND, AND FALLING IN LOVE IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY"

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

Dad and the cat he said he didn’t want:

Dharma & Greg Season 1 Episode 20 The Cat's Out Of The Bag

Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film will release on August 8, 2025 in theaters, including IMAX

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Alana Haim, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti.

EASY A 2010

Perhaps you should embroider a red A on your wardrobe, you abominable tramp.

Playing a lot of NovelAI or ai dungeon is like. A curse because it gives you inside jokes that are only for you. And some stories are worth sharing like the Clowns Vs Koala story I made way back when but then there are others that I feel would have the same effect as telling someone about a dream you had. They would just be confused and kind of bored. None of you will ever get to experience the insane pseudo-story of Fun City Stories

In the Mood for Love (2001) // Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Easy A (2010)

Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and John Hughes’s filmography, Easy A takes familiar story elements and makes them its own. Thanks largely to the enormously charismatic Emma Stone, this teenage romantic comedy by Will Gluck offers a lot of laughs while slyly delivering an important message tailored for the modern era.

17-year-old Olive Penderghast (Stone) lies to her best friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) about her weekend. She says she lost her virginity to a college boy she went out with. When her story is overheard by the judgmental and prudish Marianne (Amanda Bynes), it spreads around school like wildfire.

Easy A is set in a fantasy world where Emma Stone and Penn Badgley are average teenagers - in fact, Olive says she wasn’t turning any heads before the big lie -, and parents are all delightfully quirky or weird. In its defense, it’s consistent all the way through, and as a high school fantasy, it’s delightful. We could’ve cast someone plainer than Emma Stone (and in recent years, we have, in films like Booksmart) but then we wouldn’t have seen her belting her lungs, singing along with a greeting card, and we wouldn’t have gotten Penn Badgley in a laughably bad woodchuck costume trying in vain to rally up his classmates. As Olive’s parents, Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are hilarious - you can see where their daughter got her wit from - and the other adults paint this picture of a high school where even when things get bad, they never become THAT bad… until Olive’s lie starts to get so big no one could handle it.

For the most part, Easy A is a light comedy. I wouldn’t say that any scene will have you falling out of your seat but you’ll chuckle a lot and that smile you start wearing just a few minutes in? It only goes away when the film starts to get a little heavier. When I say heavier, I mean heavier for a film that’s perfectly suited for high-schoolers and their slightly cool parents. Now branded as a harlot, Olive decides to use her reputation to help Brandon (Dan Byrd), a classmate who is bullied for being gay. While attending a party, they pretend to have sex. He’s congratulated by his former tormentors. Her reputation is tarnished a bit more… but it’s not like it was squeaky clean anymore, so what’s the harm? You can see how things will escalate from there but it still hurts to see Olive get bullied and endure heartbreaks. It doesn’t matter that a lot of it comes from her own doing because you so easily relate to her situation. Who hasn't wanted to be cool? How many of us lost track of ourselves while trying to be liked? It’s that, combined with that time in 2011 (so 1 year after this movie) when 17-year-old Gaby Rodriguez performed a social experiment at her school by pretending to be pregnant for six months.

If your grandma is a stick in the mud, you probably don’t want to show her this one, and the little kids would have a lot of questions afterward but for everyone else, there’s so much to like about Easy A that its flaws hardly matter. It’s funny and the right amount of insightful without being too heavy. As a bonus, it's got great re-watch value, which means you'll have plenty of opportunities to memorize the snappy dialogue by Bert V. Royal. (On Blu-ray, October 14, 2021)

Here's a what if: What if Penn, Thomas' driver from your not human au, met Thomas from your Human AU. What would happen if this somehow happened?

HELLO GUYS I’m still alive still alive anyway it would probably involve a bone crushing hug and a LOT of cheek pinching. You think Annie and Clarabel are bad they got nothing on Penn

Leonardo DiCaprio is current filming the PTA's untitled new film on LA 🇺🇸💗🙌

Licorice Pizza (2021) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson