"When we are too ardent, we are less subtle. When we rush to sensual pleasure, we blur all the delights along the way."
— kundera, slowness.
![[yes.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4h0raa2cn1qze0eko1_500.jpg)
For my “Nearly Beloved” day, December 30, 2005, I road tripped across the south to a soundtrack of Third Eye Blind with two of my best friends from high school. We spent the day eating crab cakes on Florida’s gulf coast and dancing on the beach under an overcast sky. It was perfect, really. The next day, we sipped champagne from Tiff’s parents’ liquor cabinet & rang in the new year simply in Mobile, Alabama. We probably cheers’d to new beginnings or something equally corny-yet-earnest… Happy to still call Stef & Tiff good friends; after all, these are the relationships that really do stand up, for better or for worse.
![[happy mothers day to my mother, Mildrid Torvik, a mountain flautist by the looks of it. xx]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3yvn5cBJy1qb9pg6o1_1280.jpg)
While we’re on the subject of North Carolina: Between 1929 and 1974, the state sterilized more than 7,500 of its residents. Elaine Riddick (above) has been one of the most outspoken advocates for the victims of North Carolina’s eugenics project. In 1968, when she was 14, she was raped and impregnated by an older neighbor. The Eugenics Board declared her “feebleminded” and “promiscuous.” Immediately after she gave birth to her son by cesarean section, she was sterilized. Her illiterate grandmother signed the consent form with an X. “I’ve never been feebleminded,” Riddick said during a hearing last summer (PDF). “They slandered me. They ridiculed and harassed me. They cut me open like I was a hog.”
Photos of more survivors of the North Carolina eugenics program here.
(via bostonreview)
![bostonreview:
RIP Maurice [Via Friday Reads]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3psghK9Oj1qgq1t9o1_1280.jpg)
![I know multiple people with this tattoo; myself included. [via fuckyeahtattoos: Freshly finished tattoo of a Pablo Picasso drawing.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m30027vl7Y1qzabkfo1_1280.jpg)
I know multiple people with this tattoo; myself included. [via fuckyeahtattoos: Freshly finished tattoo of a Pablo Picasso drawing.]
- Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
- Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
- Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
- When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
- Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
- Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
- Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
- Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
- Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Derweze, also known as the door to hell, is a 70 meter wide hole in the middle of the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan. The hole was formed in 1971 when a team of soviet geologists had their drilling rig collapse when they hit a cavern filled with natural gas. In an attempt to avoid poisonous discharge, they decided to burn it off, thinking that the gas would be depleted in only a few days. Derweze is still burning today
(Source: goodnamesgone, via bostonreview)
(Source: deannadesign)
