fairy-wren:

purple glossy starling, also known as purple starling

(photos second photo by aj havercamp)

Correction: The first photo, of a starling looking directly at the camera, is by Brian Scott; link to original flickr post is here.

Only the second photo, of a starling in profile facing to our right, is the work of Arjan Haverkamp / A.J. Haverkamp; link to original flickr post is here.

(For those who can’t view the photos: both depict the head, throat / upper chest and shoulder(s) of yellow-eyed birds with sharp, dark-gray beaks, and iridescent purple feathers on their heads shading through iridescent blue to iridescent turquoise on their shoulders and below their throats. The bird in the upper photo has its head tilted off the horizontal, giving it the appearance of a quizzical expression.)

Though both photos depict birds from the same genus, the glossy starlings or Lamprotornis, they might not be the same species within that genus. Brian Scott’s identification of his subject as a purple glossy starling (Lamprotornis purpureus) appears to be correct, or at least consistent with the purple starling’s eye color and as much of its plumage as is visible. M. Haverkamp’s identification of the bird in the bottom photo as a superb glossy starling (Lamprotornis superbus), however, doesn’t seem to match that species’ description as given on Wikipedia, as the bird in the photo has yellow-irised eyes, not white or red. As there are over a dozen species in the glossy starling genus, many of them very similar in appearance to one another, a definitive identification with only the head and neck visible is impossible.

The two photographers didn’t both capture portraits of the same individual bird, in any case; their two photos were actually taken in different countries, England and the Netherlands, respectively, even though all the glossy starling species are native to Africa. Their vibrant coloring makes them popular with aviaries, botanical gardens and zoos on other continents, as these two photos demonstrate.

Most importantly, starlings are pretty to look at. ;)

One of my favorite female people: Princess, the cat who chose us when we went to the local Humane Society shelter to adopt a new owner. (Yes, there’s something wrong with her eyes. She’s visually impaired, though not completely blind, due to an untreated infection when she was a kitten, long before she came into our lives. She has other health issues, too, including GERD and severe food allergies, particularly to chicken. And we wouldn’t trade her for a fully-able-bodied cat and a million dollars.) Photo by me.
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One of my favorite female people: Princess, the cat who chose us when we went to the local Humane Society shelter to adopt a new owner.

(Yes, there’s something wrong with her eyes. She’s visually impaired, though not completely blind, due to an untreated infection when she was a kitten, long before she came into our lives. She has other health issues, too, including GERD and severe food allergies, particularly to chicken. And we wouldn’t trade her for a fully-able-bodied cat and a million dollars.)

Photo by me.

Photographers love Djimon Hounsou.  And who can blame them?
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Photographers love Djimon Hounsou. 

And who can blame them?

It’s Johnny Depp’s birthday today. I’m very fond of his work with Tim Burton (the bloke on the right, there) despite my deep discomfort with the culturally-appropriating and othering choices that have been made in other films he’s been in — the Pirates of the Caribbean films most egregiously. If he does indeed have Cherokee ancestry, a claim which First Nations activists often question due to his not being listed with any of the federally recognized* Cherokee Nations, then he really should use his star status to pressure the directors, producers, screenwriters, costumers et al. he works with to refrain from slandering Native peoples, and from casting non-Native actors to play Native characters. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, everyone with sufficient Hollywood cachet to make demands (whether they work in front of the camera or behind it) should refuse to participate in films that are racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-polytheist, anti-atheist, sexist, cissexist, heterosexist, ageist, ableist, and so on. But yes, I do also think that if you identify with any demographic that’s marginalized in Western culture, you have more of an obligation to not just give people a pass when you have the authority to hold them accountable.** wearediverse: oh. okay then, dearie. :P where’s that quote from? Gotta admit, I’m curious as to the source of the aardvark quote, too… * The problem with distinguishing Native people who are enrolled in a federally-recognized tribal nation from those who aren’t is right there in the phrase “federally-recognized” — meaning, of course, recognized by the United States federal government in the form of the notorious Bureau of Indian Affairs. (Yes, they still call it that. In 2012.) The BIA routinely denies recognition to extant tribal groups who can document their history so long as White property owners who stand to either lose real estate, face economic competition, or both, argue “persuasively” enough against recognition. And that’s not even getting into all the Native populations who can’t meet BIA standards of proof because Whites destroyed records and/or exterminated a high enough percentage of Native populations — or because the BIA itself took Native children away from their families to be re-educated and adopted into White families and thus created a break in the passing down of their tribe’s cultural traditions. Then there are people like me, who probably would be “federally-recognized” in Canada, but because I and my parents and grandparents were all U.S. citizens, and neither the Métis nor (unless there was intermarriage with another, border-spanning tribe or tribes which we haven’t discovered via genealogical research) any of the currently-recognized Canadian First Nations my ancestors belonged to are recognized by the BIA, I fall outside both U.S. and Canadian definitions for recognition. Members of tribal nations south of the U.S. border — from Mexico down to the southernmost tip of South America — face the same refusal of recognition under U.S. law. ** Having the authority to hold others accountable for their prejudiced speech and behavior creates an affirmative obligation to do so, in my view. This does not apply to people who lack the situational authority to correct the offending person, though some brave individuals may do so anyway; I would definitely not argue that anyone has an obligation to challenge bigoted speech or behavior from, say, a supervisor who can fire them, or a police officer who’s just pulled them over. Personal safety comes first.
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It’s Johnny Depp’s birthday today.

I’m very fond of his work with Tim Burton (the bloke on the right, there) despite my deep discomfort with the culturally-appropriating and othering choices that have been made in other films he’s been in — the Pirates of the Caribbean films most egregiously. If he does indeed have Cherokee ancestry, a claim which First Nations activists often question due to his not being listed with any of the federally recognized* Cherokee Nations, then he really should use his star status to pressure the directors, producers, screenwriters, costumers et al. he works with to refrain from slandering Native peoples, and from casting non-Native actors to play Native characters.

I mean, as far as I’m concerned, everyone with sufficient Hollywood cachet to make demands (whether they work in front of the camera or behind it) should refuse to participate in films that are racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-polytheist, anti-atheist, sexist, cissexist, heterosexist, ageist, ableist, and so on. But yes, I do also think that if you identify with any demographic that’s marginalized in Western culture, you have more of an obligation to not just give people a pass when you have the authority to hold them accountable.**

wearediverse:

oh. okay then, dearie. :P

where’s that quote from?

Gotta admit, I’m curious as to the source of the aardvark quote, too…

* The problem with distinguishing Native people who are enrolled in a federally-recognized tribal nation from those who aren’t is right there in the phrase “federally-recognized” — meaning, of course, recognized by the United States federal government in the form of the notorious Bureau of Indian Affairs. (Yes, they still call it that. In 2012.) The BIA routinely denies recognition to extant tribal groups who can document their history so long as White property owners who stand to either lose real estate, face economic competition, or both, argue “persuasively” enough against recognition. And that’s not even getting into all the Native populations who can’t meet BIA standards of proof because Whites destroyed records and/or exterminated a high enough percentage of Native populations — or because the BIA itself took Native children away from their families to be re-educated and adopted into White families and thus created a break in the passing down of their tribe’s cultural traditions.

Then there are people like me, who probably would be “federally-recognized” in Canada, but because I and my parents and grandparents were all U.S. citizens, and neither the Métis nor (unless there was intermarriage with another, border-spanning tribe or tribes which we haven’t discovered via genealogical research) any of the currently-recognized Canadian First Nations my ancestors belonged to are recognized by the BIA, I fall outside both U.S. and Canadian definitions for recognition. Members of tribal nations south of the U.S. border — from Mexico down to the southernmost tip of South America — face the same refusal of recognition under U.S. law.

** Having the authority to hold others accountable for their prejudiced speech and behavior creates an affirmative obligation to do so, in my view. This does not apply to people who lack the situational authority to correct the offending person, though some brave individuals may do so anyway; I would definitely not argue that anyone has an obligation to challenge bigoted speech or behavior from, say, a supervisor who can fire them, or a police officer who’s just pulled them over. Personal safety comes first.

Source: deppz

BUN BIT FIRST!                                                                           ?

(via bunnyfood)

Source: nyawe4ka

watanafghanistan:

Silk Road Republic for Afghan dresses.
Amazing sets of Afghan traditional dresses, Designed by Maryam Hamidi-Shams.

You can visit the site to check more and place your orders here!

http://silkroadrepublic.com/SPRING_2011_COLLECTION_3.php

These are all so gorgeous! I’ve always found embroidery so irresistible…

I changed the link above to point directly to the most recent items, simply because the top-level home page includes a loud autoplaying audio track without any way to turn it down or off except via one’s own computer (or other device)’s volume controls. The site may also display oddly on some computers; I had to shrink the page in order to make all of the text visible, but fortunately the letters were still legible for me at that size.

The text on the home page at silkroadrepublic.com reads:

SILK ROAD REPUBLIC IS AN ONLINE SOURCE FOR TRADITIONAL & CONTEMPORARY AFGHAN APPAREL FOR THE MODERN GIRL. BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR OUR UPCOMING BRIDAL AND EVENING WEAR LINE.

Once the center of the Silk Road, Afghanistan and its people have held onto many treasures. Afghans are a beautiful mixture of different cultures and backgrounds blended into one identity and with this we build onto fashion. After decades of invasions and civil wars, Afghanistan lost many beauties, including its posh sense of style. The traditional clothing were being made and sold by middle aged men, because women were not allowed to take part in any business outside their home.

Slowly and steadily, the world is beginning to see the hidden treasures of Afghanistan. We at Silk Road Republic want the world to realize these beauties through their fashion, where the east meets the west.

[images: Ten photos of a woman (possibly the designer?) apparently of west- and/or central-Asian ancestry — her features including dark-brown eyes, wavy black hair, a strong nose and full lips — modeling a different set of clothing in every image. Each outfit is a salwar kameez, a traditional mode of dress in central and south Asia which consists of a long tunic (sometimes more closely resembling a medium-length dress to Western eyes, particularly when tailored for women), called kameez, and loose pants worn underneath, called salwar; in five of the photos the woman is also modeling a long matching scarf or dupatta, which is traditionally worn with salwar kameez. Each garment is decorated with varying amounts, colors, styles and patterns of embroidery, appliqué and/or other details. The predominant color of each photo is, respectively:

  1. plum-violet decorated in dull red and silver;
  2. vivid green embroidered in bright pink and gold, with a pink scarf;
  3. blood-red with darker embroidery and appliqué;
  4. white with geometric decoration in prussian-blue and coral;
  5. silver-fringed white with complementary silver-fringed green scarf;
  6. aubergine-purple with multicolored decoration;
  7. ultramarine blue with silver embroidery and matching scarf;
  8. black with cinnabar-colored decoration;
  9. deep red embroidered in turquoise and copper with matching scarf;
  10. hot pink with mini mirrors held on by silver thread and matching scarf.

The background of each photo is plain dark gray or black to highlight the garments.]

(via fawziah)

Source: watanafghanistan

Lee Jeffries,* writing as LJ. on flickr: Untitled He did the strangest thing. Rolled up a joint in cardboard. Never seen that before but I guess if you got no paper you gotta make do. I’ve had a sheltered life. Yet another mis-attributed work by an amazing artist that showed up on tumblr stripped of any connection to or mention of that artist.** Like most such images I come across, finding the true source of this photograph took me less than five minutes. It’s possible that one or more of the thousands of tumblr users who reblogged this image before me also found the correct attribution information and included it with their post. But, unless the original post contains (or is edited to include) that information, and a link to that post is preserved through all reblog branches, the majority of the reblogs aren’t going to include or even link to the correct source — that is, the artist who created the work being reblogged all over tumblrspace. It really isn’t difficult or time-consuming to find sources for un- or mis-attributed works you come across on tumblr. If the work is (or includes as part of an image) text, you can put a quotation from it into your search engine of choice in order to locate the original source. With images, whether photographic or otherwise, Google Image Search has gotten really good at finding matching images even when they’re cropped differently or otherwise (un)altered; just go to google.com/imghp, click the camera icon in the search box, and paste in the URL of the copy of the image you found on tumblr. With most images, the source will be either one of the first web results, or on the results page accessed by clicking either the “All sizes” link (near the top of the page, above webpage results) or a matching image in the “Visually similar images” link (near the bottom of the page, below webpage results). Even if you only look for the creator credit for things you want to reblog once in a while, every time someone takes those few minutes makes a difference… * The photograph featured in this post is only one of literally hundreds of arresting portraits of homeless people that Jeffries has captured. His flickr photostream and website are both well worth the visit — though perhaps more wisely in moderation than marathon session, as the pain and adversity of life on the streets is more often highlighted than hidden in Jeffries’s work, and those harsh realities are disquieting. Further comments from the photographer, as found on the flickr page: The challenge of course is to try and make “colour” artistic. So much easier with a black and white shot. It helps having the right ingredients to start with. I saw his eyes from across the street and almost RAN to get to them!!! I told him that he had stunning eyes too. He was a quiet man and just smiled and said thank you. ** This reblog ultimately — according to the information on the tumblr-reblog where I found it, at least — traces back to a post made by realsh1t; the source & image links previously went to realsh1t’s main page, however, rather than the post that began this thread, and, with five-thousand-plus notes, I’m not checking whether that attribution is accurate.
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Lee Jeffries,* writing as LJ. on flickr:

Untitled

He did the strangest thing. Rolled up a joint in cardboard. Never seen that before but I guess if you got no paper you gotta make do. I’ve had a sheltered life.

Yet another mis-attributed work by an amazing artist that showed up on tumblr stripped of any connection to or mention of that artist.**

Like most such images I come across, finding the true source of this photograph took me less than five minutes.

It’s possible that one or more of the thousands of tumblr users who reblogged this image before me also found the correct attribution information and included it with their post. But, unless the original post contains (or is edited to include) that information, and a link to that post is preserved through all reblog branches, the majority of the reblogs aren’t going to include or even link to the correct source — that is, the artist who created the work being reblogged all over tumblrspace.

It really isn’t difficult or time-consuming to find sources for un- or mis-attributed works you come across on tumblr. If the work is (or includes as part of an image) text, you can put a quotation from it into your search engine of choice in order to locate the original source. With images, whether photographic or otherwise, Google Image Search has gotten really good at finding matching images even when they’re cropped differently or otherwise (un)altered; just go to google.com/imghp, click the camera icon in the search box, and paste in the URL of the copy of the image you found on tumblr. With most images, the source will be either one of the first web results, or on the results page accessed by clicking either the “All sizes” link (near the top of the page, above webpage results) or a matching image in the “Visually similar images” link (near the bottom of the page, below webpage results).

Even if you only look for the creator credit for things you want to reblog once in a while, every time someone takes those few minutes makes a difference…

* The photograph featured in this post is only one of literally hundreds of arresting portraits of homeless people that Jeffries has captured. His flickr photostream and website are both well worth the visit — though perhaps more wisely in moderation than marathon session, as the pain and adversity of life on the streets is more often highlighted than hidden in Jeffries’s work, and those harsh realities are disquieting.

Further comments from the photographer, as found on the flickr page:

The challenge of course is to try and make “colour” artistic. So much easier with a black and white shot. It helps having the right ingredients to start with. I saw his eyes from across the street and almost RAN to get to them!!!

I told him that he had stunning eyes too. He was a quiet man and just smiled and said thank you.

** This reblog ultimately — according to the information on the tumblr-reblog where I found it, at least — traces back to a post made by realsh1t; the source & image links previously went to realsh1t’s main page, however, rather than the post that began this thread, and, with five-thousand-plus notes, I’m not checking whether that attribution is accurate.

(via thetruthsiren)

Source: flickr.com

calliebear:

Me. Me. Me. and Oh Me.

Such gorgeous eyes! And there are six more photos of Callie here for your viewing pleasure.

(originally spotted on fuckyeahprettyfatchicks)

Source: calliebear

Thoughts on a word: Exotic

(via fawziah)

colors-and-impulse: Young Korra, playing around, being fascinated and loving life. OMG too adorable! Her little chubby cheeks and hands! And the water-refracted light casting patterns on her face… so gorgeous! It’s really wonderful to see what you do with Korra when you do a fully colored and shaded pic, instead of just a sketch. ;·)
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colors-and-impulse:

Young Korra, playing around, being fascinated and loving life.

OMG too adorable! Her little chubby cheeks and hands! And the water-refracted light casting patterns on her face… so gorgeous! It’s really wonderful to see what you do with Korra when you do a fully colored and shaded pic, instead of just a sketch. ;·)