The Barbarienne
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thebarbarienne.bsky.social
The Barbarienne
@thebarbarienne.bsky.social
2.1K followers 470 following 21K posts
Book production queen. Occasional writer. Amateur jeweler. Spoonie. I post pictures of my cats and food. I love to RT art, but only if it has decent alt-text.

🦖TRANS RIGHTS OR I BITES 🦕
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thebarbarienne.bsky.social
And here, a video of them asleep. They're so cute!
November 18, 2025 at 2:22 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I don't know if this is macro enough for #MacroMonday, but it's one of my favorite photos.

In the later autumn, bees are still asleep in the flowers after I'm already awake, because it's too cold for them to wake up. Though this photo might be of one awake and gathering pollen.

1/2
November 18, 2025 at 2:22 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Finished another painting! My #watercolor progress continues.

This is a remarkably colorful grackle, original photo by @glengrambo.bsky.social . Alas, mine does not look as grumpy as the real thing, maybe because he seems to be on LSD?
Photo of a male grackle, a common North American bird. They're generally brown, but the photo brought out its colors: purple and blue on the wing and tail, blue head, and main body shades of gold and brown. The bird is perched on a pine tree of some sort, with short green needles and some visible pine cones among them. The extreme foreground is out-of-focus pine; I assume this was taken with a long lens, tightly focused on the bird. The background is abstractedly blurred brown/gold/green of what I assume are more trees in the distant background. A watercolor painting of the grackle photo. The pine tree and cones are very sketchy/abstracted, and I tried a blurry bit in front that looks meh. The bird itself is even more colorful and bright than the original—I have no self control with color! The background is random whorls of yellow and gold and brown and a bit of green. It's very trippy psychedelic!
November 16, 2025 at 11:56 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Please forgive the weird outline on Iggy. The original photo is very dark and I had to fiddle with it to make them visible.
Two black cats curled up together on my blanket-covered legs.
November 13, 2025 at 2:53 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
She found a downstairs source of warms.
A black cat lying in front of a floor-level heating vent. The same black cat lying in front of the heating vent, but she's turned the opposite direction. These two photos were taken several hours apart.
November 12, 2025 at 3:30 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Look at these golden beauties!
Six absolutely ENORMOUS popovers. They're a pastry that looks like a very tall muffin/souffle that has grown up out of the pan and expanded into golden bready goodness. The interiors are airy and custardy and delicious.
November 10, 2025 at 8:53 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Not a real snail, and almost certainly not biologically accurate, but I was pretty pleased with this "medieval marginalia" I did on a letter for a friend.
A warrior bunny riding a snail. The nail is reddish with a gray skirt structure and a gray shell. The snail has eyes at the end of its little head stalk things, which I'm pretty sure isn't where snail eyes actually are, but it's just a fun little cartoon.
November 10, 2025 at 3:59 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
(Apologies for screenshotting to comment, but I don't think I'm misusing the move here)

I've been in the business for 31 years, and I'm sorry to say, this isn't new.

It's total buffoonery, in response to perverse incentives.

1/2
Preeti Chhibber @runwithskizzers.bsky.social one of my least favorite new publishing "truths" is that books only deserve consistent marketing & publicity if they are already doing well, it's the new "needs experience to get experience"
November 6, 2025 at 8:07 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
post from Aspiring Warrior Librarian I feel like a lot of Gen Z don't know that the ACA/Obamacare was the compromise. The Democrats wanted Medicare for All. The Republicans wanted Free Market Healthcare (aka poor people die). Obama took a plan initially conceived by the Heritage Foundation (those project 2025 fuckers) and implemented by Romney for Massachusetts to say "hey, you can have a little free market, but we gotta cover other people too". It was already a compromise. And the Republicans lost their shit and have proceeded to spend fifteen years crying about their own plan being rampant socialism and repeatedly trying to repeal it despite never actually having a back-up plan for healthcare, simply because they never really wanted compromise to begin with. The moment Obama got elected, they got into a meeting and vowed to tear down everything he tried to build no matter how much it agreed with their so-called values. Because racism, let's be honest, but also because any compromise they put forward is just a show. "Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man" isn't just a hypothetical. It's literally what happened when we tried to meet Republicans in the middle with healthcare.
November 6, 2025 at 3:56 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I don't even have to get up.
A black cat curled up between my knees on the leg support area of my recliner.
November 3, 2025 at 2:54 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Now with alt text.
Beni (Kevin J. O'Connor) and Evy (Rachel Weisz) from The Mummy. Beni is labeled Al Techbros Beni: Not everyone has the time and resources to become an artist— Evy: So you admit that art takes labor and resources that Al companies are profiting off of without compensation, and you're just an unskilled fraud of an "artist" Beni: [stunned]
November 1, 2025 at 2:59 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I can't let this go by without adding my darling Ginny and her spectacular RBF.
A small, black kitten outside a bathroom door, looking in. She looks like a feline Wednesday Addams, glaring up at the camera. The same cat, now an adult, crouching in a red and white laundry bag, peering over the edge. Her glare portends your death.
October 31, 2025 at 4:53 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Holy shit.

Though truth to tell, this does not improve my opinion of the Wordlebot.
Screenshot showing the Wordlebot ranked my "skill" on this game as 99 out of 99.
October 29, 2025 at 4:10 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
First animated crush without saying your age.
Jason from Battle of the Planets. He was the bad boy of the group.
October 29, 2025 at 3:54 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Vibes are off. Post cats being dramatic.
Two black cats lying in sunny patches on a red Persian-style carpet. The chiaroscuro + their expressions of "What do YOU want?" makes it all very dramatic.
October 23, 2025 at 3:21 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Time to post the Nazi Bar story again. It was originally a twitter thread, but someone put it together as a single post somewhere.
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out." And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, I'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, 1 noticed Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them." And i was like, oh ok and he continues. "you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down. And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments becaus their end goal is to be terrible, awful people." And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.
October 22, 2025 at 1:15 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Watching How to Train Your Dragon for the first time ever, and the way Toothless stares at Hiccup when he first tries to share the fish is exactly the way Ginny stares at me.
#GinnyStaresAtMe
A black cat sitting up on a stack of boxes, staring down at the camera with disdainful patience. A black cat lying down on a box with her paws tucked under but her arms sort of out to her sides? She's looking up at the camera with an expression of "Why are you bothering me without bringing treats?"
October 21, 2025 at 9:14 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Iggy welcomes you to toebean Tuesday
A black cat curled up. One of her rear paws is up near her face, with the toebeans facing out.
October 21, 2025 at 6:22 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Oh not at all! Iggy welcomes all boxes!
A black cat (Iggy) with a pink collar, reclining in a box that is turned on its side. The box is very large. Iggy sitting upright in a very small box. She barely fits, but seems happy to be there.
October 19, 2025 at 5:43 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
It's #Caturday. Here is Iggy in a box.
A black cat with green eyes sitting in a cardboard box. She is staring straight into the camera.
October 19, 2025 at 1:36 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I'm a couple months late with this @birdwhisperers.bsky.social challenge from July. Still #Birdtober though!

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
Image by Penny from Pixabay
The original photo of a sulphur-crested cockatoo. It's a white bird with a gray, hooked beak, and a pair of bright yellow crests curling upward on the back of its head. It's sitting on a branch in dappled sunlight, a branch of leaves just over its head. The distant background is out-of-focus leafy branches. A watercolor painting of the bird in the photo. The background has been simplified to be mostly white with a couple of light impressions of leaves above the bird's head.
October 15, 2025 at 10:38 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I was there in the mythical past, and to answer the QP's questions:

1. Yes, we roamed unsupervised.

2. 100% normal.

3. Because there was no way to check on us, so parents had to just deal. They had been raised the same way. Parents today CAN keep tabs, so they do.
Were kids in the 80s actually allowed to roam around unsupervised, or is that just in movies? I keep seeing movies and shows set in the 80s where kids are just out all day with no supervision - riding bikes across town, playing in the woods, coming home when the streetlights turn on, etc. Was this actually normal back then, or is it exaggerated for storytelling? If it was real, why was it considered safe then but not now?
October 13, 2025 at 7:22 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Yes, I prefer cakey brownies. I like fudgy brownies too, but cakey gives me slightly less heartburn.

I add semisweet mini chocolate chips, so they're not *too* cakey.
Three cakey brownies on a paper plate.
October 13, 2025 at 12:50 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Lord save us from children with a shallow teaspoon of life experience who write hot-take articles.
Headline: It's Finally Time to Give Johnny Cash His Due Subhead: Compared to Dylan and Springsteen, the country-music legend can seem deeply uncool. It took years for me to appreciate his profound, plainspoken strength.
October 9, 2025 at 8:38 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Now with alt text. It's fucking brilliant.
zeldawilliams From Create Mode › Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want. To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough', just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross. And for the love of EVERY THING, stop calling it 'the future'. AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.
October 7, 2025 at 4:54 AM