Steven Gray

tragedy + time and a few photos along the way

[autist @litteralyme0]

Growing up hearing “Wikipedia isn't a valid source” and then entering a workplace where people say “just ask ChatGPT” is a surprisingly strange timeline

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

Church historians are always so coy. Like the Holy See never played around with consciousness-expanding rituals around the pineal gland.

[Megalithic Mysteries @Megalithic12000]

Nobody can fully explain the giant pine cone at the heart of the Vatican.

The 13ft bronze Pigna was cast around 1,900 years ago and stood beside Rome's temple of the Egyptian goddess Isis, spouting water from its tip.

The Church claimed it in the Middle Ages and set it in the courtyard of Old St Peter's, where pilgrims washed at it for centuries, and even that is the young half of this story.

🔹Once gilded in gold
🔹Cast in 5 separate sections
🔹Dante wrote it into his tour of Hell
🔹Signed by its otherwise unknown maker
🔹A district of Rome is still named after it today

Walls from the palaces of Assyria, in modern Iraq, show winged beings raising the same cone shape, carved 900 years before the Pigna.

But here is where it gets strange, because experts cannot agree what the cone is, a pine cone or a date palm flower, or what the figures are sprinkling, holy water or pollen.

Mainstream can trace every home it had, but not the meaning it held.

What was the cone actually for, and how does a symbol outlive its own meaning?

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

The first time you turn a corner in Florence and the cathedral appears in front of you, it does not look real.

This is Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence, and it is one of the largest churches ever built.

It stretches 153 meters long and rises 90 meters from the floor to the base of the lantern. When it was completed in the fifteenth century, it was the largest cathedral in all of Europe, with room inside for tens of thousands of people. Even now, it is among the largest churches on earth, surpassed in size by only a handful of others in the entire world.

But the real marvel is the dome.

Filippo Brunelleschi built it between 1420 and 1436, without the wooden scaffolding everyone believed such a thing required, laying over four million bricks in a self-supporting double shell in a herringbone pattern he devised himself. It weighs tens of thousands of tons and it rises to nearly 115 meters.

600 years later, it remains the largest masonry dome ever constructed anywhere on the planet. Nothing built since, in brick and stone, has ever surpassed it.

[Eye On Axis @eyeonaxis]

Shadow Play, Sarah And Lucy Jenkins

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

The first trailer for Robert Eggers' ‘WERWULF’ has been released.

In theaters on December 25.

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

You get into an unnecessary street fight with a stranger and suddenly want ring rules when you lose?

That dude was lucky that Sailor Strangle was so accommodating when he felt the tap.

They’re both still idiots, BTW.

[Kangmin Lee | 이강민 @kangminlee]

Black man gets beat and put into a choke hold by Asian Kick streamer dressed up as Sailor Moon.

Generational loss of aura.

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

Extremely pale, extremely blonde children are the ginger cats of humans.

[Creapills 💊 @creapills]

“Jetez-vous à l’eau avant que les data centers ne boivent tout.” - Polaroid détruit les data centers de l'IA dans sa dernière campagne 📸

[Culture Explorer @CultureExploreX]

When a city destroys its great buildings, it teaches people to expect less from public life.

Historic buildings are more than walls. They hold the labor and dreams of people who came before us.

Once they are demolished, the city becomes easier to forget.

Photo of Old Penn Station in NYC

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

Don’t talk to me, or my son,
or my son’s son,
or my son’s son’s son,
or my son’s son’s son’s son,
or my son’s son’s son’s son’s son,
or my son’s son’s son’s son’s son’s son,
or my son’s son’s son’s son’s son’s son’s son
ever again.

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

My hometown is about to get wet.

[NWS Storm Prediction Center @NWSSPC]

7:57am CDT #SPC Day1 Outlook Enhanced Risk: across parts of the central High Plains https://t.co/TgJgC6cj9Y

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

Every now and then, the Internet consumes and regurgitates itself in a way that tickles me past the point of all reason or good taste.

[Walmart Battle Orc @ASo1omons]

My IG algorithm is returning to normal..

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

“Literally” is a poisoned word at this point.

To be taken seriously, use it no more than thrice a week.

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

This hits especially hard as I’ve been thinking lately about how little I bring to the conversational table after not having been in a good reading groove in a long time.

[Bambulu @Bqmbulu]

“If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.”

— James N. Mattis

[Logan Hall @loganclarkhall]

“England historically has struggled here in Massachusetts.”

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

This and a triple negroni might fix me.

[Steven Gray @CameraAndFlask]

@ronsterd89 If more people lifted a spoon at a soup kitchen once a week instead of waiting on public figures they’ve never met to fix the world, the world would need less fixing.