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James Butler

@piercepenniless.bsky.social

#barbelith

Alex Steffen @alexsteffen.bsky.social · Apr 6

I hadn't seen this before. This is pretty remarkable.

Earth and Moon in one NASA photo.

ht @astrokatie.com

Earth and Moon from DSCOVR NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured this unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. This view shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth. Ian Regan processed this version of the image to account for the Moon's motion. NASA / NOAA / Ian Regan

April 7, 2026 at 7:20 AM

alexthoth

@alexthoth.bsky.social

Jenny Everywhere, Barbelith, early 2000s. I used to crank out her comics…still love her!

#JennyEverywhere #IndieComics #Barbelith #Webcomics #ComicArt #WeAreTheAliens #Chaosky #Mandala

January 11, 2026 at 12:54 PM

Phil Hine

@philh.bsky.social

The archived Barbelith:
barbelith.iamcal.com

Barbelith

barbelith.iamcal.com

April 20, 2025 at 8:59 PM

Graeme McMillan

@graemem.bsky.social

Disclosure Day is Steven Spielberg’s Barbelith experience send non-tweet.

June 12, 2026 at 1:16 AM

Josephine beckbook.com Riesman

@josie.zone

"Was Ultimate Marvel fundamentally antisemitic?" — the greatest thread in the history of Barbelith, locked after 324,005 posts

"All power, all true power, in the Ultimate Universe belongs to a select secretive few" — Brian Michael Bendis

July 30, 2025 at 1:16 PM

Kryptobro

@narbiz.bsky.social

Ojalá fuese Barbelith

September 18, 2024 at 10:16 AM

Cat Vincent (he/him, Useless Eater)

@catvincent.bsky.social

The Invisibles: Jack Frost, Boy, Ragged Robin, King Mob and Lord Fanny... and Barbelith, on Robin's cheek.

May 15, 2026 at 6:25 PM

Travis Hedge Coke

@travishedgecoke.bsky.social

This is still one of the funniest things to come from the old Barbelith.

July 6, 2025 at 9:08 PM

Samsara Final Girl

@eris.anarchogoth.rip

BARBELITH

YOUMADE ME YOU
LEFT ME HERE ALONE
TRANSMITTING,
WAITING FOR YOU

THE REVERSE OF THE moon
THE STRING
THE
LABYRINTH THE WAY OUT.

IT5 0nlY A EAmE

September 8, 2025 at 4:21 AM

Tom Ewing

@tomewing.bsky.social

A panel from the Invisibles by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell. Dane sees alien object Barbelith above him in the sky and falls off his bike

June 26, 2024 at 10:45 AM

Phil Hine

@philh.bsky.social

Just turned up an ancient interview with Grant Morrison (dunno who "Brother Yawn" is) on the old Barbelith webzine:
www.barbelith.com/old/intervie...

www.barbelith.com

April 20, 2025 at 8:55 PM

Ted Faber

@snorerot13.bsky.social

Today my jurisdiction ends here. #DTLA #PershingSquare #SixthStreet #StreetPhotography #LAMurals #Barbelith

April 19, 2025 at 9:56 PM

Ian MacEwan

@ianmacewan.bsky.social

Spending way too much time on the barbelith forums and hyper fixating on lonelygirl15

gita “the formalist” jackson @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social · Apr 8

open question for the room: how were you using the internet in 2008?

April 8, 2025 at 6:32 PM

Bobby Campbell

@bobbycampbell.net

Sebastian O and The Invisibles connections?
www.reddit.com/r/Barbelith/...

From the Barbelith community on Reddit: Sebastian O and The Invisibles connections?

Explore this post and more from the Barbelith community

www.reddit.com

November 30, 2025 at 12:09 AM

an ocean of emotion

@betarayben.bsky.social

This comic book makes me miss Barbelith.

an ocean of emotion @betarayben.bsky.social · Jun 10

I will continue to not be normal about Sophie Campbell and Tamra Bonvillain’s SUPERGIRL.

A copy of the second issue of Supergirl, the cover of which is centred on two versions of Supergirl arguing about who is the real one. To the left the cover heralds boring small talk while the right side shows Titano the super-ape.

June 11, 2025 at 6:42 AM

Ika Willis

@ikax.bsky.social

BARBELITH REDUX

jess m. ☕🍂 @jametc.bsky.social · Jun 24

I think AI is going to eventually tank in the longterm, but...

the only real way to combat this is single-interest communities. Forums, user comms, etc, with a barrier to entry. They become trustable knowledgebases. It's really the only way forward is to return to what worked best the first time

a text post from Michael Tonelli: "It's really unbelievable the niche parts of the internet that Al is ruining. My wife looks up crochet patterns online. It's now overrun by Al made up patterns that make no logical sense. My wife said if you tried to crochet the pattern that Al hallucinated, it wouldn't even be possible.
And it's like, why? Why is someone ruining free crochet patterns? How were they even aware of that corner of the internet? Is there a plan to make the internet so unusable that people abandon it so we don't have access to information anymore?"

June 25, 2025 at 9:40 AM

Caio Maximino

@cmaximino.bsky.social

Barbelith ass painting

René Magritte @renemagritte.bsky.social · Aug 6

The Banquet #artbots #magritte
https://botfrens.com/collections/61/contents/1212611

This canvas is the last, largest, and most impressive of four oil paintings of this title; the three other paintings are all dated to 1957 (ill. 851–52, and p. 272, no. 857). There are also five versions of this image in gouache, starting in 1956 and extending to 1964 (ill. In ibid., vol. 4, 1994, p. 193, no. 1421, p. 198, no. 1429, p. 273, no. 1563, and pp. 275–76, nos. 1566 and 1568). Magritte first realized the idea and conceived the title for this series in the first of these gouaches completed in 1956 shortly after he announced to Mirabelle Dors and Maurice Rapin, in a letter of November 9, 1956, that "Le Banquet" was one of his latest "finds" (ibid., vol. 3, 1993, p. 267). The little sketch in this letter shows the main motif of the sun visible before a clump of trees set in an unspecified landscape. In the first oil version (as in the earlier related image, The Sixteenth of September, 1956, location unknown; ibid., vol. 3, 1993, p. 254, no. 834, ill., which shows the crescent moon on a large tree), the clump of trees is set in a meadowlike clearing dotted with large stones. In the second oil version of The Banquet, as in the Bergman canvas, the woodland glade is replaced with a stone parapet or balustrade, whose top is lit by the sun's rays. This feature suggests a parklike setting, a domesticated concept of nature suited to Magritte's deadpan, realist style. The proportions of the objects in relation to one another also differ from canvas to canvas; in the picture under discussion, the sun looms larger in relation to the trees than in other versions and appears therefore closer to the viewer. It is interesting that, although the motif in essential respects is identical, significant variations mark each version as a distinct image.
The Banquet series is a development of another series on which Magritte had started working in February 1956 and which he called The Place in the Sun. In these pictures, Magritte focused on the Surrealist idea of displacement, but with a particular twist. One object was superimposed on another larger one to which it was unrelated. The original series included an image of a seated scribe superimposed on an apple (ibid., vol. 3, 1993, pp. 252–53, no. 833, ill.) and Sandro Botticell’s Primavera silhouetted against a figure in a bowler hat seen from behind (ibid., vol. 3, 1998, p. 258, no. 837, ill.). Magritte's approach in these pictures resembled what he referred to as "Objective stimulus,'' a term he applied to those instances in which he replaced an object familiar to a particular context with one related to it but out of place, as he did in his 1933 painting Elective Affinities of a huge egg in a birdcage (Paris, E. Perier; Sarah Whitfield, Magritte, London, The Hayward Gallery, 1992, exh. cat., no. 60, ill., n. pag.). As he explained to Rapin, The Place in the Sun is if you like an 'Objective stimulus' with the difference that the image which comes 'on' another has a still greater charge of strangeness (ibid., vol. 3, 1993, p. 253). In a subsequent letter to Dors and Rapin, Magritte wrote of The Sixteenth of September, "I have continued with my 'Places in the Sun' but by now the title is no longer suitable for a big tree in the evening with a crescent moon above it!" (ibid., vol. 3, 1993, p. 254). The object that would have been hidden (crescent moon, sun) is now visible, hiding part of the object that would have hidden it.
These works are striking examples of Magritte's interest in the categories of the visible and the invisible. In a letter to André Bosmans of September 25, 1964, Magritte explained:

With regard to "the invisible," I understand that which is not visible, for example; heat, weight, pleasure, etc. There is the visible that is seen: the apple on the face in The Great War, and the visible that is hidden: the face hidden by the visible apple. In The Banquet the sun hidden by the curtain of trees is, itself, visible (René Magritte, Lettres à André Bosmans, 1958-1967, ed. by Francine Perceval, Brussels, 1990, p. 383).

According to the above criteria, the sun hidden by trees is an example of the "visible that is hidden." In the Banquet series, Magritte carried the implications of these reflections one step further: he actually rendered the sun visible by creating a visual conundrum, in which the sun is not displaced from its customary context, but rendered strange.
At this time Magritte seems to have been interested, moreover, in the varying quality of light at different times of day. Of the second version of The Sixteenth of September (1956, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten; ibid., vol. 3, 1993, p. 257, no. 836, ill.), he wrote to Dors and Rapin on August 6, 1956: "I have just painted the moon on a tree in the gray-blue colors of evening" (ibid.). In the Bergman version of The Banquet, the strong red glow of the setting sun is framed by the darkening landscape, a naturalistic effect that further dramatizes the "charge of strangeness" (Magritte, quoted in ibid., vol. 3, 1993, p. 253).
The Bergman painting also has a strong formal quality, with the sun as a pure circle in the center, balanced by the strong architectural horizontal of the balustrade. In this respect, the picture recalls Max Ernst's Forest series of the late 1920s (Ernst Katalog, vol. 3, pp. 180-209, nos. 1140-96, ills.), where the circular forms of sun or moon work pictorially in both an abstract and figurative sense.
–Entry, Dawn Ades, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1997), pp. 172–74, cat. 86.

Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection

August 16, 2025 at 10:28 AM

Underwear Homunculus

@marisasandlin.bsky.social

Barbelith, baby! Also: TWoP, I Can Haz Cheezburger, Cake Wrecks.

Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · May 21

as we grieve the slop-ification of Google, I want to know everyone's favorite fun niche sites from Back When The Internet Was Good. what did you visit every day on your coffee break at work? we were a big Homestar Runner household, and I also loved Cake Wrecks and Animals Talking In All Caps

May 21, 2026 at 1:48 PM

alex䷰trismegistus

@technihilism.bsky.social

The Barbelith

René Magritte @renemagritte.bsky.social · Mar 12

The Banquet - 1958
https://botfrens.com/collections/61/contents/1212611

March 26, 2026 at 2:25 AM

Bobby Campbell

@bobbycampbell.net

www.reddit.com/r/Barbelith/...

From the Barbelith community on Reddit: Everything is connected?

Explore this post and more from the Barbelith community

www.reddit.com

January 4, 2026 at 3:47 AM

Glenn Quigley

@glennquigley.bsky.social

Barbelith written in spray paint. Speech balloons read: was this here before? Paint's still wet.

June 6, 2025 at 10:25 PM

Metal-Aged Mom

@metalagedmom.bsky.social

Going to see Sadness, Oldest Sea, and Barbelith in Detroit on September 30.

Judith Slaying Holofernes (Live), by Oldest Sea

2 track album

oldestsea1.bandcamp.com

August 8, 2026 at 2:12 PM

K. A. “Kîck Åß” Pillë

@keithpille.bsky.social

every so often I'll see someone on the internet mention Barbelith and I can feel the back half of my brain light up in a very particular way

March 28, 2025 at 3:13 PM

Meg

@prayingmantis.bsky.social

Barbelith➡️ livejournal ➡️ Friendster➡️ MySpace ➡️
Facebook➡️ Twitter/Instagram➡️ Bluesky
Hi @howsyrface.bsky.social @fluxblog.bsky.social @stoatie.bsky.social @d-nye-griffiths.bsky.social @robcave.bsky.social
@viciously.bsky.social
➕I married @joewasfly.bsky.social!
I'm probably forgetting someone!

Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · Jun 20

If you're gen x or millennial, odds are you have known some people online for *decades*. Across multiple now-dead forums, across vast gulfs of time in internet years. You've probably got a friend group that outlived multiple sites.

October 24, 2024 at 5:42 AM

gnomic heresy

@gnomicheresy.bsky.social

Anyone here from barbelith?

March 11, 2025 at 2:38 PM

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