just remembered shows used to have 20-25 eps per season
Getting more and more impressed by RFK Jr. He's the first thoughtful and intelligent American politician I've seen in maybe 40 years able to speak at length in something other than generic platitudes, continually leading the attention away from the corporate media talking points and back to what, above all the bullshit, really needs to be said. It's a long shot but right now I really hope he gets the Democrat nomination and then the presidency.
Unlikely to happen, but it's that sort of thinking that is needed to create genuine change and fix the manufactured divisions keeping us apart and destroying all western societies.
The last US election I mostly wanted Tulsi Gabbard to win: she was a Democrat and would have been the first woman President, but the Democrat establishment wouldn't get behind her because her focus was steadfastly upon healing divisions and searching for bipartisan solutions to problems, rather than demonizing and attacking every second person in your country for the rest of time.
Whatever way forward out of our present Hell has to have that as its ultimate goal: even if you "own the libs" or "smash the right" in some final confrontation, you're still going to have to live alongside the millions of people you've attacked and humiliated for the rest of your life, with them as your neighbours. What kind of life is that? Is it a happy, safe, harmonious existence? Who wants to live that way for 70 more years?
Something about this wave of puritanical evangelism in a progressive hat that's gripping the zeitgeist currently recently caught my attention and I think I've figured it out.
I kept seeing advertisements on Instagram about that movie Corsage, about Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The mini-trailer features Vicky Krieps, who plays Elisabeth, being tightly laced into a corset, demanding it be tighter while maids look concerned.
This is par for the course. Empress Elisabeth was famed for her obsession with her looks and her documented fear of fatness that caused both her orthorexia and her chasing an ever-thinner look. I'd be surprised if that wasn't depicted at all.
And yet there were tons of people in the comments bitching about how the movie was "depicting unsafe corseting practices" and "can't you people get anything about this stuff right?"
It gave me pause. Maybe not everyone knew about Empress Sisi. So I responded to one commenter, "but it's truthful. She really did corset like this."
And the response I got was, "Well, they're making it look like a good thing! People won't know!"
And it clicked. It suddenly made absolute sense.
The idea that depiction is equal to endorsement and encouragement is what is currently in the popular belief system.
Empress Elisabeth was well-documented as going through a well-made leather corset every few weeks because she tightlaced so severely. Her thinnest recorded waist size was 16 inches. She frantically kept herself at 110 pounds on a 5'8 frame. She would fast for days and barely ate when she wasn't fasting. She had herself sewn into her goddamn clothes just to look as thin as possible. You cannot simply overlook this when making historical fiction of her, just like you couldn't overlook Winston Churchill's rampant drinking if you wrote things about him. It is intrinsic to her identity and if you remove it you remove something very fundamental.
And because the trailer depicts this facet of her life, everyone decided that the filmmakers were condoning and even encouraging this practice in real life.
Because they cannot conceive of something just existing. Even in fiction, a depiction of something negative must be proof that the creator thinks it's a good thing. Why else would it be there?
And it was such an enlightening look into how people think. It makes so much more sense.
History, and Sisi's dangerous tightlacing, be damned.
I do want to point out another thing here that tends to be ignored by antis, which is that how you interpret a text is not universal.
Because the response to "there are upsetting and morally wrong things in life that need to be acknowledged" is always "we're not saying you can't EVER bring them up, you just can't romanticize/condone them! If you show them as good, then people will think they're good!"
And like, okay. Y'all know the children's hospital meme, right? The INTENDED meaning by whoever designed it was that it would look like someone dragging a giant red paintbrush around the floor. Fun! And there is obviously at least one person on Tumblr who focused on the theory around the color red and how it's a positive color (probably not the point of the design, but still taking it in a positive way). And then there were a bunch of people on Tumblr who were like, "Uh, it looks like blood, though?" You've got at least three different people who are all looking at the same exact thing and seeing three different meanings.
And that's just a single fucking color, not even a complex story with a lot of moving parts. I am 100% certain everyone here has at least one story with a moral lesson they interpreted differently than the author intended. (Mine is that episode of Arthur where it's supposed to be bad that he punched D.W. in the arm for breaking his model plane. BITCH DESERVED IT. PUNCH HER AGAIN.)
It's not that no story ever romanticizes a bad thing. It's that regardless of whether someone intends to portray a thing as good or bad, someone else is going to interpret it the exact opposite way. So "it's okay if you don't condone it" isn't useful, because whether the text or author condones a thing is not at all relevant to how some people will interpret the same thing. Like, this is so common WE HAVE A DIFFERENT MEME FOR IT.
Bringing it back to Empress Sisi: I am 100% certain that there is at least one person who would see a scene where Sisi is clearly supposed to be neurotic, deeply insecure about her body, and doing things so extreme and unhealthy that the other people around her are clearly judging her for it, and will be like, "Wow!! Corset pretty!!!" Some people are just going to do that.
So, "it's okay if you don't condone it" is really "you can't depict this thing at all because someone might interpret it the wrong way." Which you will note is NOT allowing people to discuss upsetting things, despite protestations to the contrary.
I was gonna say “what you think he had insurance???” but 1) at least in the early aughts to mid-teens, NY was one of the less excruciating states to get medicaid in, and 2) he was a minor and it’s a LOT easier to get medicaid for a minor, especially when said minor’s legal guardians are retirees on fixed incomes I’d wager.
So yeah they’re all just fuckin dumbasses! I love them.
This is why I think it would be peak comedy for the radioactive spider to be of a non-venomous species and for there to be a scene of a new Peter Parker/Spiderperson looking up the spider’s features or posting a photo to an identification subbredit before being informed of the fact that nothing will happen
entemologist reddit: oh yeah, that one’s venom isn’t strong enough to cause anything other than a bit of localized pain at the bite site, no worries.
Peter Parker the next morning, stuck to his ceiling: Well someone fucking LIED!!!!
I won’t stop being an asshole to translators, do your job properly, you accreditationless duolingo piece of shit.
t. translator
I want to kill myself.
Please PLEASE start being an asshole to translators so they never, ever do something this utterly unhinged
Shit like this always come from wannabe-writers who can’t get published cause their writing is trash so they pull this kind of crap to feel “in charge”.
i’ve been thinking about this video nonstop since the first time i saw it
the jaunty walk perfectly in time with the music. the tip of the hat the unaware or uncaring bystanders. the shaky camera with random zooming. the fact that this is seemingly happening in a park. this is peak media i can’t get over it
Every 21st century piece of writing advice: Make us CARE about the character from page 1! Make us empathize with them! Make them interesting and different but still relatable and likable!
Every piece of classic literature: Hi. It's me. The bland everyman whose only purpose is to tell you this story. I have no actual personality. Here's the story of the time I encountered the worst people I ever met in my life. But first, ten pages of description about the place in which I met them.
Modern writing advice: Yes your protagonist should have flaws but ultimately we should root for them and like them from the beginning :)
Charles Dickens: Here is the worst ugliest rudest meanest nastiest bitch you’ve ever met in your life.
Modern writing advice: Make sure your POV character goes through a significant arc! Make sure they are changed by the narrative! Make sure they learn a lesson!
Narrators of every book of the 19th century: the lesson I learned is these people fucking suck, sayonara you freaks
Modern writing advice: It’s all about the character overcoming obstacles and learning! They learn their lesson so they can fix their mistakes and make good choices in the future! It’s a character arc! It’s called growth! Readers love it!
Everyone from ancient times through the 19th century: would you like to watch a Guy fuck up twenty times in a row
sick of job hunting i wish you could still make a living scamming rich people into buying photos of ghosts and faeries like those victorian photographers
well i'm not doing that. they're getting ghosts.
I just went on a rant about plungers, how’s your day going?
“go off bestie”? Okay, I will.
This is a plunger.
Classic red cup with a wooden stick. We all know it, love it, and have seen a cartoon character using it to unclog a toilet. Right?
WRONG.
The image above is actually a drain plunger, used on sinks, showers, and baths. Not on toilets.
These are a toilet plungers.
Take note of the variations. Each of them have a flange of sorts at the bottom, either connected via a cup or more accordion-like tube. These are designed to actually get down into the toilet bowl where it flushes down, giving it more space and leverage to unclog blockages. See the example below:
Notice how the flange allows it to go deeper into the toilet to provide more power to the plunge. Sink/drain plungers are far less efficient and effective at the task.
Sink plungers can also have an accordion shape to help with power in plunging, but crucially do not have or need the flange that toilet plungers do.
To recap: cup plungers are for sinks, showers, bathtubs, and other drains. Flange and accordion plungers are for toilets. Notably, accordion plungers are slightly harder to use, but are more powerful when used correctly than their flange counterparts.
So the next time you see a cartoon, video game, or stock art depicting a cup plunger being used on a toilet, you can feel the same levels of anger and emotion that I do!
why does this have nearly 100 notes
Because with this level of passion, containment is futile 
The real question is why does this not have a million notes? This is information that will very likely, at some point, be incredibly useful to anyone who has indoor plumbing. Which is, you know, probably, 99.99% of this website's user base. (I'm sure there's someone out there using Tumblr who lives in a house built in 1850 which never got upgraded and they still have an outhouse rather than toilet.)