Fancy Dresses Described;

The Hornet.

Fancy Dresses Described; or What to Wear at Fancy Balls is an 1887 costume guide, and it is amazing and wonderful. Some of the ideas would be best avoided in this century, but the costumes run the gamut from Five O’Clock Tea to Gold Mines to Backgammon to whole countries, and everything in between. Fascinating. The lists of illustrated costumes does not even come close to all the costume guides:

A sample of one page of descriptions:

The costumes are amazing and beautiful:

Magpie.

Oh, the Magpie! Who needs an excuse to wear that?

I haven’t even come close to perusing the whole book, but this caught my eye, and now I want this outfit:

Masherette. Black satin tail coat and skirt, with white waistcoat; black embroidered stockings; crimson silk handkerchief; opera hat and crutch stick; high Wellington boots; shirt front, high collar; eyeglass in eye; buttonhole.

Monte Carlo.

The book is a tremendous amount of fun, just on reading alone, and it’s a great resource and imagination spark for all the costume makers and wearers out there. Fuck, I really wish I could sew.  It’s as well to remember that this book did cater to the rich, just look at the entry for Night. Diamonds scattered in the hair, and much more. Of course, there’s no need for them to be real.

Turtles All The Way Down.

Paul Kidby’s illustration of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: a large disc resting on the backs of four elephants, which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle called Great A’Tuin, as it swims through space. Illustration: Paul Kidby/Orion Books.

Me, I don’t live in ‘merica, this is Turtle Island. World turtles figure prominently in many cosmologies, and Atlas Obscura has a look at them.

Frigg’s Day Mood.

A Pale Horse Named Death – Die Alone.

Sometimes you wake up and your world is swallowed up
Sometimes your world changes overnight
Sometimes the ones you love betray you
Sometimes you find yourself all alone

My life has fallen apart so many times I lost count
So many people I knew, now they are all lost
One thing is guaranteed you always die alone

Sometimes you want to put a gun to your head
Sometimes you want to pull the trigger, now you’re dead
Sometimes we cry ourselves to sleep
Sometimes you find yourself all alone

My life has fallen apart so many times I lost count
So many people I knew, now they are all lost
One thing is guaranteed you always die alone

Nightmares become real inside my head, I dream of my death

My life has fallen apart so many times I lost count
So many people I knew, now they are all lost
One thing is guaranteed you always die alone

NY: Oddities Market.

If you are or can be in Brooklyn, NY on December 2nd or 3rd, get your tickets now for The Oddities Market. If you buy through Atlas Obscura, you get in before everyone else, so there’s the opportunity to grab the best of the odd.

A holiday market of the most curious kind, featuring the best purveyors of odd and unique gifts plus the promise of a visit from Krampus? This is a seasonal affair you won’t want to miss. And with this special VIP presale, offered exclusively though Atlas Obscura, you’ll gain first access to the holiday market before it’s opened to the general public.

Following the overwhelming success of the past two Oddities Markets, Ryan Matthew Cohn and his team are returning to the Brooklyn Bazaar for the Oddities Flea Market hosted in partnership with Atlas Obscura. Inside, you’ll find a wonderful assemblage of vendors bringing you all sorts of peculiar items perfect for gift-giving season. Feast your eyes on natural history items, taxidermy, jewelry, one-of-a-kind art, bizarre flair, strange literature, anatomical curiosities, and much more.

This ticket offers you a special experience available only with VIP access. We’ll open the doors early, from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., to grant a select few first entry into the market. You’ll skip the lines, avoid the crowds, and have early access to the best selections of goods of 65 vendors, including many new vendors. And, even after the doors open to the public at 12 p.m., you can peruse as long as you wish.

You can read more at Atlas Obscura, and grab your tickets, too.

Oh, So That’s What It Took.

Robert Galbraith/Reuters.

Reddit announced on Wednesday evening that it was shutting down several neo-Nazi forums that promote violence — just hours after it was revealed that a Trump-loving Redditor had fatally stabbed his own father.

In an announcement posted on its website, Reddit said it was cracking down on violent content in a way that it hadn’t done before.

“Going forward, we will take action against any content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people,” the website wrote. “Likewise, we will also take action against content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals. This applies to ALL content on Reddit, including memes, CSS/community styling, flair, subreddit names, and usernames.”

Among other neo-Nazi communities, Reddit has shut down /r/pol,/r/nazi, and /r/DylannRoofInnocent.

Reddit didn’t discover their ethics until after the Daily Beast exposé, so it’s a bit difficult to give them so much as one point for doing the right thing. They have had one very long time indeed to clean their forums up; they’ve certainly received enough complaints over the years from users as well as outside criticism. It will be interesting to see if they actually follow through this time, and stand against their former stance of ‘hey, sewers are alright, we’re making a lot of money!”

Via Daily Beast and Raw Story.