Shel

hi all! one hundred years ago Magnus Hirschfeld published "Die Intersexuelle Konstitution" in the 1923 (and last -_-) edition of Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen. the essay contains what is popularly held as the first instance of the word transsexual. so i got curious about the publish date of the journal, so i could hold a proper centenary. i still haven't found that, nor (very surprisingly) have i come across an English translation of the essay (!). however, my bud Fiona found this record of the essay's full title; supposedly, the essay was based on a lecture given March 16th, 1923. if we accept the lecture's date as the first known instance of the word, then the term transsexual will have its centenary on March 16th of this year!! let's have a fucking party!!!!

ENDLESS MILLENNIA OF BEING COOL FREAKS
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF BEING COOL FREAKS IN THIS PARTICULAR MANNER
THE FEW... THE PROUD... THE TRANSSEXUALS

RED ALERT. FIREFOX CAN NOW EDIT PDFS

HUGE w in the browser wars

An "otherwise unremarkable" London plane tree that is about halfway through eating a park bench.

The Hungry Tree grows in the grounds of King's Inns, Ireland's oldest school of law (established 1541). The tree doesn't have quite the same pedigree as the institution. It is a London Plane, a hybrid cross tree between the Platanus orientalis (oriental plane) and Platanus occidentalis (American sycamore). Grown heavily in urban areas because of their tolerance for pollution, this particular sapling was planted sometime in the last 80 to 120 years– alongside a cast iron bench that was installed on the grounds about a century before.

It isn't clear exactly when the tree began to eat the bench, but historic photographs point to sometime in the mid 1960s. Now a popular curiosity, visitors sit on the bench that is being slowly lifted and subsumed into the bark of the tree, posing for photographs.

In 2017, the Hungry Tree failed to secure a tree preservation order from the city council (and the city decided against listing the bench as historic, since that might require them to destroy the tree itself), but both tree and bench are covered by existing measures to preserve King’s Inns. Left to its own devices, the Hungry Tree isn't likely to stop its steady progress devouring the bench anytime soon.

A longer blog post with some historical images of the tree (and its meal).

also half of those are missing a closing parenthesis