olive brown

This is what Melbourne looked like 100 years ago. Amazing! Directed by Charles Cozens Spencer.

(Source: archive.org)

North Korea’s approved hairstyles for women. (Image: David Guttenfelder)

• France’s Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault asks ministers to stop using English terms, reminding them that the language of the Republic is indeed French.
• Natural does not automatically equal better. It grinds my gears a little when people praise products for being “chemical-free”. There’s no such thing!
• Here are 30 creative ways to repurpose photos. I am so terrible at picking presents out for people so I love DIY projects like this.
• This is an excellent piece on the racism that really matters in Australia.
• The amazing story of Mike the headless chicken, who lived an incredible 18 months after having his head chopped off. Whaaaaat.
• Anne Hathaway is not your friend:

  I recognize that there is an entire publicity industry designed to get us to “like” people whom we essentially pay to see work. And perhaps it’s fair to judge whether or not that industry has been effective in making you think you know Hathaway in a way that you probably do not. But the fact remains that you don’t really know any of these people.

• The last time a non-period drama won the Oscar for Best Costume Design was nearly 20 years ago. Why don’t the Oscars care about new clothes?
• North Korea is implementing state-sanctioned haircuts for men and women. Married women are instructed to go with a short haircut, while the single ladies can let their hair down with longer, curlier styles.
• Top model Cameron Russell gave a brilliant TED talk last year about why being a model is NOT a career path.
• A French law forbidding women to wear trousers in Paris has finally been amended. FINALLY!
• Are you tired of hearing about rape culture? Too bad.

So I moved into my new house at the start of the week. It is wonderful.

The other night it was pretty late but I wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep so I was deciding between smoking a cigarette in bed or eating some fruit in bed. I knew fruit was the better option but I was feeling particularly wild/French so after much reflection, I decided to go for the cigarette and opened my window in preparation.

Then a moth flew in through said window.

How can you trust anything that looks so much like a piece of wood but isn’t?
(Image: Tony @ Bettony.co.uk)

If you know me in real life, you probably already know that I am terrified of moths. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that I fear more. I’m well aware that they cannot physically harm me. But there’s something about the way they flap around everywhere and hang around in dark corners that makes me feel physically ill. Even the word ‘moth’ is disgusting.

My best friend used to live on a farm and one hot summer night in Australia we were sitting on the front porch having a few drinks and the Biggest Moth In The World flew right into my face. I’m pretty certain that moths can sense my fear because I am always their primary target. They never respond to my swatting, rather they tend to see this as an invitation to continue flapping their weird moth dustiness into my face again and again. I cried and ran inside. Yes, I literally cried. I thought I was dying. The length of its body would have been the size of my palm. Imagine the wing span!

So back to the other night here. Now, after three years in France I had not seen a single moth in this country, and I was convinced that they just did not exist here. Tant mieux. I’m pretty sure this moth was not French, but sensed my fear from another continent and travelled a long way in determination to get to me. Who knows. Naturally, I freaked out. I wanted to get one of my housemates to get it out but because I’m new here, I’ve not yet subjected them to my insanity and would like to keep it that way for at least a few weeks.

I decided the best course of action would be to turn off all the lights in my room and turn on the lights in the adjacent kitchen to lure the moth out, because moths are attracted to light because they think they’re flying to the moon or something. I was too scared to stay in my room in the dark because I couldn’t see it and what if it decided to fly into my mouth or ears so I went in the kitchen. In my panic, I left my computer and pants and slippers in the bedroom so I didn’t really have anything to do in the kitchen except stand there awkwardly in my underwear with cold feet and stare at my bedroom doorway and hope that none of my housemates came in and asked what the fuck I was doing.

After a while I realised I couldn’t hear that sickening tapping noise a moth makes every time it lands on something, so I decided to go and investigate. I crawled back into my room, in attempt to keep as much distance between myself and the devil’s spawn as possible. I couldn’t see it anywhere, so I assumed it had either flown back outside or into the kitchen without my noticing. I turned the lights back on in my room, it didn’t reappear, I went to bed (hesitantly) and all was good.

Cut to a few days later aka last night. I’m still in the process of unpacking my things and this evening I was clearing a lot of stuff off my floor, when I move something and see the moth lying there underneath. I jump away immediately, and it takes me a while to notice that it’s not moving. I use the longest object I can find (my 1 metre long ruler) to try to prod it, still nothing. Moth is dead. I still haven’t moved it because I know the second I try it will majestically come back to life and annihilate me.

Fuck all moths.

Images, clockwise from top left:

I could go on about how multi-faceted Nina Simone was musically, how incredible her low, raspy voice was, allowing her to create a sound that was uniquely her own throughout a career that spanned five decades, how she used her music as a channel for social change during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and how she was just generally badass, but hopefully you know all about that already. (If not, educate yourself.)

Instead, I want to appreciate how Simone expressed herself visually. Her style was evidently African influenced, mixed with the western trends of the era. She had a particularly admirable ability of emphasising her accessories without excessively piling them on. Her penchant for wearing statement jewelry and head wraps became somewhat of a trademark; a style that we see emulated today by the likes of India Arie (left) and Laura Mvula:

Images:

Vogue Italia featured I Put A Spell On You in an editorial video for their February 2011 issue, and Simone’s music has been used for many a runway show, only going to show that her legacy continues to live on in the world of fashion.

Sharing other people’s material on social media is hardly anything new. I’m pretty okay with this as long as credit is given where credit is due. I do it myself if I feel like someone has worded something better than I could, but when I can I will add my own commentary at the end to give a little insight as to why I personally wanted to share it.

There are, however, a lot of dicks on the internet who make it a whole lot less fun by modifying the content that they are sharing, modifying the credit or removing it completely. Most of the time I can laugh off the inspirational quotes misattributed to Marilyn Monroe but from time to time I see something like this, and I can’t not say anything. I’ve eliminated a few points because it’s quite long, but you can see the original post in its entirety here.

LATEST CANCER INFORMATION
from John Hopkins

AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY AND ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHN HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY …

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

3. When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to STARVE the cancer cells by not feeding it with foods it needs to multiple.

What cancer cells feed on:

a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water—best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines will become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor.

Anger, unforgiving and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

(PLEASE SHARE IT TO PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT)

First of all, this was not issued by nor has any connection to the Johns Hopkins university or hospital, and Johns Hopkins has disclaimed its contents on its official website here, carefully going through the piece point by point.

One point that I really take issue with here is number 15: “Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor.” No. There is NO scientific evidence that shows that cancer can be caused or prevented by an individual’s state of mind. I’ve never had cancer myself but I imagine it would be a pretty difficult time to be positive and proactive. Statements like this only lead the victim to blame themselves for their misfortune, as if they need that on top of what they’re already going through.

Cancer is, obviously, a horrible disease. Almost all of us know someone who has been affected by it, and have seen what kind of pain and suffering it causes. The thought of someone I care about refusing potentially effective treatment because they read this on Facebook makes me sick.