when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

I’m having some emotions about it!

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

God I’m not okay about it

Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.

I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3

Just to add to the pile: this was the cover of Springsteen’s break-through album Born to Run, in 1975:

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

There’s a lot more online if you search. They’re all pretty amazing. But the photographer is right, the one chosen for the album cover just pops.

hey, hi, I was just on the former bird app and came across this info from a brand new study and now I cannot stop screaming internally??? what the actual fuckkkk

theres' an article from the guardian here and here is the actual study:

i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out

brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad

OP this is EXCELLENT

Now THAT’S a self care resource! If you’ve gotten distracted by capitalism’s appropriation of “self-care” and watering the meaning down to nothing this is a super helpful guide to cut through the bullshit.

we are in a media literacy crisis

friendly reminder that characters don't need to be saints to be entertaining. and telling a story does not mean endorsement. art does not need to be all about morally good people.

IDK if this was meant as hyperbole but it's literally true:

Adult literacy is low.

Child literacy is low.

Information literacy has shifted dramatically in the last decade, but reputable information sources like research journals and factual news reporting have been unable to keep pace.

We are genuinely in a crisis of media literacy, with ever fewer genuinely factual resources available in the style and language used by contemporary audiences.

It may sound condescending, but we genuinely need to remind people, or worse, explain to them for the first time that art is not evidence of real world behaviour.

So, thank you, for this reminder. Genuinely.

You're correct:

Art does not need to feature exclusively morally pure characters. Art is not proof of the creator's secret, violent desires.

ETA; Yes, the links are US American; no your country is not immune to propaganda. Be POLITE in asking, and I will help you find the data for your own country as well.

ok NOW we can all freak out marvel vfx workers voted to unionize

article here

Hey yeah in the midst of all the hype and the strikes, can we PLEASE fucking talk about this

I feel so bad every time I reblog my beloved mutuals art without crazy tags because the art is so so good I just never have proper energy to say anything

This, but just like... All the art. Every internet artist.

Half my reblogs are silent because I can't fuckin' WORDS.

while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.

important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.

--

in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.

the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.

200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.

--

i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.

Related: One of the Hawaiian islands (Kaho’olawe) was also bombed extremely heavily to test conventional (non-nuclear) bombs between WWII and 1990 (y’know, 50 years or so). There’s no radiation fallout but a huge amount of ecological devastation and a lot of shrapnel / unexploded bombs that have required a massive cleanup and replanting effort.

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/37604472/the-bombing-of-kahoolawe-went-on-for-decades-clean-up-will-take-generations/

somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

as soon as the internet decided depression and anxiety were the everyman mental illnesses and therefore not to be taken seriously we were all fucked tbh bc the fact that i have to feel embarrassed to admit i have debilitating anxiety because people will think im just an uwu dont call me out coward is ridiculous. its insane that i have to clarify that my depressive episodes are like life threatening and not whatever dipshit dumbed down idea of depression people seem to have like oh yeah i just wanna watch netflix and eat ice cream and not text people back. like bro i think im the devil

like maybe depression and anxiety are household names now but they do still kill people. like. theres a reason they fucking kill people.

What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.

What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’s not merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the ‘unworthy’ rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.

also: the way “gifted” children are taught largely just rewards them for already knowing things or having a specific skill come easily to them, and thus not only gives them severe anxiety about asking for help or not knowing something right away for fear of disappointing those adult mentors, but also actively discourages them from learning HOW to learn things and pick up new skills, thus sabotaging any life they might try to pursue outside of that institutional career.

Plus, not only is it possible to be “twice exceptional” - aka “gifted” and have a disability that can make learning more difficult - if you’re “gifted”, people usually don’t notice you have a disability.

So you spend your life split between being academically smart and then also unable to do basic, day-to-day functions and being told that you’re “too smart to struggle with this”.

Like, I do believe that neurotypical “gifted” kids are also fucked up by the system, but the majority of people who I personally know who complained about the system turned out to be neurodivergent in some way but didn’t know when they originally started in “gifted child” discourse.

And I’m going to take a stab and say that the people hit the hardest by this are probably women with ADHD, as their presentation usually looks like their life falling apart at/post-uni.

So you can spend your entire life being told you’re definitely going to succeed - and usually you’re pushed to specific career/life goals - and then overnight, your life falls apart and you can’t figure out why.

And I’m going to take a stab and say that the people hit the hardest by this are probably women with ADHD, as their presentation usually looks like their life falling apart at/post-uni.

And women with autism.

Nonbinary and GNC afab folks too- because being “raised female” unfortunately means you deal with a lot of the same shit, even if it turns out that you’re actually not a woman.

a study i did because i realized idk how to draw environments at all LMAO

STOP SCROLLING THIS IS A PAINTING

jesus fucking christ

"i wish i could do something 😔 / i wish the wga had a kickstarter or a gofundme, i would throw money at it" good news! it's amazing how you can literally go onto the wga strike website or the wgawest linktree from their twitter and find links to support writers and other workers affected by the strike

@staff hey watch this

PLEASE REBLOG THIS TO GET MORE VOTES.

Toxic sites that use an algorithm feed: Twitter, Youtube

Healthy sites that use a chronological feed: Tumblr

I rest my case.

Please do your research and don’t blindly follow trends.

hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate

BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard (under My Filters) to get rid of it!

reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3

It is actually way better for 100 addicts to get their fix on pain pills than a single person in pain go without. I call this the "Torture is bad" principle. You should be able to get the good stuff forever after a single doctor's visit. If you're worried about addicts fund rehab centers and needle exchanges instead of torturing people.

Among other things if you can't use the legit market you turn to the black market anyway.

if you're worried about addiction, build a society where people get their basic needs met, including pain management.