Notices by Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)

Good morning! It’s Sunday and still nice and cool, and I’m playing with terra sigillata #ceramics #pottery

In Andalucia we get these dust storms up from the Sahara, called a Calima or Kalima, which deposit huge amounts of extremely fine sand onto everything. It coats cars and stains the sides of buildings.

When I was sweeping up on the roof the other day, I found a little corner with a pile of it. It's been there sitting there since our last kalima. So I mixed it in with some ball clay, to see if I could make some terra sig out of it. #ceramics #pottery

Now that I have gained some small proficiency at throwing on the wheel, I have been thinking conceptually, about what I would like to express with #ceramics I want to do something with the idea of uninvited arrivals. My father's side of the family are Sephardic Jews. They arrived here as migrants from Morocco during the Al-Andalus period.

There has always been great ambivalence about this period here. And yet, the impact of this period became part of what defines Andalucia. #Pottery

Similarly, while people tend to dread the arrival of the Kalima here, it literally colours the landscape, it colours the clay here. Andalucia would not be itself without Kalimas.

I am really drawn to this as a metaphor for migration.

Anyway, I'm rambling. #ceramics #pottery

There is also a nice little linguistic parapraxis - that kalima and 'clima' sound very similar. The hotter and dryer it gets in this part of the world, the more kalimas we will have, and the more people will migrate because of climate change.

So I'm playing with a lot of ideas, historically, sociologically, and meteorologically. Which ultimately, speaks to the heart of the art of ceramics.

Unlike when I was younger, I don't feel the same need to bring logic into this. #ceramics #pottery

This all really came about as a consequence of the technical limitations I either have to live with - earthenware and low temp firings - or overcome. At first I thought of all the money I could throw at overcoming those limitations.

Then I thought further and thought about how inauthentic that was. What a consumerist solution that was.

It's a greater challenge and more exciting to find a way to make something new and good with what I already have. #ceramics #pottery

If you are white, this podcast is an outstanding look at how ingrained the myth of ‘the Police’ is in our consciousness.

And while there are certainly somewhat better social contracts between the police and the citizenry in some parts of the world, the author's critiques are still powerful.

#Policing

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ordinary-unhappiness/id1680330412?i=1000775433558

Something occurred to me. Two decades in the tropics have caused me to assume knowledge that I guess some people just don't get taught.

Infections happen very fast in the heat. If you get a cut or a blister, you need to clean it, disinfect it and cover it STRAIGHT AWAY.

I realise that my northern European neighbours only have a few days left of this heat, but please take it seriously.

It's actually quite staggering how many French Colonists died of shaving cuts in Indochina.

To my northern neighbours suffering from the current heat wave.

I lived in approx 38C with 90% humidity for 20 years, and I have a few pieces of advice.

1. Don't do anything fast that you can do slow.
2. Umbrellas aren't just for rain. They work for sun, too.
3. Sweat is your friend. Drink lots of liquid, eat and drink things that trigger sweating.

4. Cold showers and baths trigger your body to warm up. Room temp showers work best - and don't bother drying off.

RE: https://journa.host/@samlitzinger/116784883875340095

I'm so fucking tired of hearing these murderous bastards say that the people they killed 'were not targets', as if that is a coherent statement.

When you drop bombs, you've targeted. Period. You are responsible for what you destroy. Period.

Today I spent my time at the workshop mixing a glaze called Tenmoku Gold Tea Dust.

While there are a lot of beautiful commercial glazes, I really love the unknown of experimentation. I did a bit of that mixing base glazes with oxides.

But tenmoku glazes are meant to act unexpectedly, and that really intrigued me.

So, this is my first glaze. It is meant for a cone 6 and above firing, but I am still going to try it at a lower temp and see what I get.

#ceramics #pottery

RE: https://federate.social/@mattblaze/116740915392913397

Great alternative viewing to the World Cup.

I guess I’m on an apron jaunt. #sewing

If you love interacting with AI chatbots because it feels easier than interacting with another human, I want to try to prompt you to think about why that is.

All discourse is two-way. With another human, we are constantly getting - no matter how much affinity we feel - a little bit of push back. That sense of pressure conditions our own evaluative thinking. It forms and nurtures an independent mind.

That even slight discomfort you feel when meeting another human mind forms you. 1/

Whoah, this will be interesting.

Let's see those 'pro-lifers' go full Nazi (well, more Nazi)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/09/supreme-court-death-penalty-execution-disabilities

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@davva23/116533664034889558

If this isn't an actual consultancy area yet, it should have been for ages, and will be pretty soon.

@tuban_muzuru Honestly, i don't know. Oil, while ugly and dirty, is fundamentally useful. You really can't say the same thing for an algorithm @inthehands

I genuinely can't begin to imagine the horror of being in this situation, can you?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/05/canadian-ashley-macisaac-fiddler-musician-singer-songwriter-sues-google-ai-sex-offender-ntwnfb

I do wonder if many Americans - anti-Trump Americans - need to believe in the intrigue of Russian kompromat to explain Trump's obeisance to Putin because to reject that idea is to have to truly absorb the reality that they have a President who feels no loyalty to his own country.

Let me give you a little piece of insight. Nations are abstract; wives are concrete. Any man who can fuck a porn star while his wife is pregnant has no loyalty to ANYONE OR ANYTHING.

On balance, I think we really don't grasp how deeply mentally ill Trump is and has been for a long, long time.

Something to do with the way the media covered him has really managed to blind many Americans to the obscenity of the man currently running their country.

Sex offender, serial embezzler, tax evader, blackmailer, inciter of insurrection, extortionist, he fucking tore down half the fucking WHITE HOUSE.

But people still want to fantasise the existence of some spicy Russian kompromat.