my spirit animal
My name is Helga Sinclair. I’m acting on behalf of my employer, who has a most intriguing proposition for you. Are you interested?
ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE (2001)
She was peak character design, no one has done better since
The OTW is Recruiting for Translation Volunteers
Are you fluent in a language other than English? The Organization for Transformative Works is recruiting volunteer translators! Help us signal boost or read more at https://otw.news/0868eb
We really need volunteers who speak Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Estonian, Filipino, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, European Portuguese, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Welsh
as a general rule. if what we’re calling ‘cultural appropriation’ sounds like nazi ideology (i.e. ‘white people should only do white people things and black people should only do black people things’) with progressive language, we are performing a very very poor application of what ‘cultural appropriation’ means. this is troublingly popular in the blogosphere right now and i think we all need to be more critical of what it is we may be saying or implying, even unintentionally.
There is nothing wrong with everyone enjoying each other’s cultures so long as those cultures have been shared.
Eating Chinese food, watching Bollywood movies, going to see Cambodian dancers, or learning to speak Korean so you can watch every K drama in existence is totally fine. The invitation to participate in those things came from within those cultures. The Mexican family that owns the place where I get fajitas wants me to eat fajitas. Their whole business model kind of depends on it, actually.
If you see something from another culture you think you might want to participate in, but you don’t know if that would be disrespectful or appropriative, you can just…ask. Like. A Jewish friend explained what a mezuzah was to me, recently. (It’s the little scroll-thing near their front doors that they touch when they come into their house. It basically means “this is a Jewish household.”)
“Oh, cool,” I said. “Can I touch it? Or is it only for Jewish people?”
“You can touch it or you can not touch it,” she said. “I don’t care.”
“Cool, I’m gonna touch it, then.”
“Cool.”
It’s not hard.
You want to twerk, twerk. I’ve never heard a black person say they didn’t think anybody else should be allowed to twerk. Just that they want us to acknowledge that they invented that shit, not Miley fucking Cyrus.
It really boils down to three simple things:
- Consent. Is the culture open to sharing this thing? (& don’t cheat by finding one person who consents while most of the culture disagrees.)
- Context. If a culture is open to sharing a thing but it is a thing of great religious significance, take the time to learn what is a respectful way to treat the thing. Probably don’t use it as random decoration or sexualize it unless that’s what it’s for.
- Credit. Give credit and if possible, buy from the original creators so the money goes where the credit should be.
This is really useful to me personally because I’ve definitely caught myself losing sight of what cultural appropriation actually is, and why it matters, so thank you, and everybody else pay attention too
Concept: a woman is holding hands with a robot, and the woman is wearing a shirt that says "I like my women like I like my keyboards" on the front and "mechanical" on the back, over an exploded view of a cherry mx brown keyswitch.
The robot's shirt says "flesh lover" in the old recaptcha distorted text style. The back has "select all the squares with the cutest girl" and a 3x3 montage of photos of the woman currently holding her right hand.
obligatory Gee, I sure wish robots were shoving their lesbianism down MY throat!
[ID: A thread of 5 tweets by @/dayn_does_comix]
Image 1:
I was at the movies tonight and a very interesting thing happened to me... I was in the bathroom before the movie and an older woman approached me. She asked how long I'd been using a cane, I told her almost 10 years. She paused and then said, “...was it hard?” (1/5)
Image 2:
...and I realized this woman was going through exactly what I went through 8 years ago. So I looked her in the eye and said “yeah. it was so hard. I face planted in a Walmart parking lot before I finally broke down and did it. But it was so worth it.” (2/5)
Image 3:
This woman is 75 and was absolutely terrified of starting to use a cane. So she looked at me, a young person, out and about with my cane, and had her realization. She told me she has severe vertigo, and that sometimes she can't stand up and it's terrifying... (3/5)
Image 4:
...but it's even more terrifying to admit that you need help. so we talked about that fear. we stood in the bathroom at the AMC and we talked about what it feels like to take a leap into vulnerability and the unknown. and I just want to remind anyone who needs to hear it (4/5)
Image 5:
it's okay to be afraid. it's natural not to want to admit to that vulnerability. but it's so worth it!! the freedom youn gain from using mobility aids is so worth it, whether you're 20 or 75. take the leap. (5/5)
[End ID]
I graduated high school in 99.
There was a student at our school named Wayne.
Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.
Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.
The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.
Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help. He went to guidance counselors for help. He went to the principals for help.
He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.
Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.
So... no.
No one in my school talked about being trans.
Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.
This is going to be an unpleasant post but I need to talk to y’all about heat stroke in dogs. I am an ER vet and I am seeing firsthand the death toll that this heat wave is taking on our pets. In the past two weeks, for every single weekend shift I have worked, we have had at least one DOA with a body temperature over 107 degrees. One of them had simply been on a 20 minute walk at 5pm. All of them were brachycephalic (short faced breeds like pugs and french bulldogs). Their owners were in shock that this could happen so quickly, and their grief lingers with me.
If you have a dog, and especially if you have a brachycephalic dog, you need to familiarize yourself with the signs of heat stroke. Do not take your dogs out in the heat of the day, be aware of the pavement temperature, and always have fresh water available for them. When I am outdoors with my dog I am checking on him constantly. This heat wave is extremely serious; I need you to keep yourself and your pets safe.
every gym leader is like “I lost!?! UNBELIEVABLE!” buddy you live in a world where every ten year old child has always been offered a free fire breathing monster at least once and you brought nothing to this fight but anthropomorphic flowers
gym leaders’ whole job is to provide a specific challenge, a battle of a certain type and difficulty level. if you’ve brought the tools and skills to complete that challenge, you’re going to win by design. the pokémon in that battle are probably not actually the strongest pokemon they have.
when gym leaders go “argh, how could i lose??” they’re acting to give your victory legitimacy because you’re 10. they’re like a villain cosplayer letting a baby knock them over. they’re being nice!!
fountain in italy
This is what I tried to explain to US platforms like Patreon when they suspended my account for having a nude statue as the background image: I live in Europe, I can go and see a nude statue within a 5 minutes walk. Children can see them, they're not in some 18+ container. I will never understand those policies.
here's my hot take about my generation and people younger than me (I'm 22 years old)
The reason current teenagers and people in their really early 20s are conservative on accident and have such shitty takes on the internet is because our generation was much more sheltered than previous generations and because we were raised to be ok with orwellian servailence and that is 100% the fault of our parents, Reagan Era kidnapping panics, and the rise of technology all coming together to prevent us from doing the sketchy shit that sends parents into panic mode but which is also completely fundemental to childhood development. If your parents had even a crumb of money to their name and even a shred of free time they started tracking your phone as soon as it was possible to. I did not experience this because my parents are actively trying to live like it's the 1990s and still have not gotten cell phones of their own, and did not let me have one until I was 18 years old and it was no longer their choice, but literally over half of my friends in middle and high school had their phones tracked by their parents at some point or other, and we would occasionally find this out, not because their parents told them, but when we were trying to do the aforementioned sketchy shit and their parent's car would pull up. And I would, like a reasonable person after finding this out, encourage my friends to just leave their phones at home, and their response would be "What if I get kidnapped" or "My parents are just trying to keep me safe"
This in my estimation has lead to a combination of kids being terminally online because they do have internet access and are better at deleting search history than their parents think they are, but don't have the freedom to go out and do shit without their parents' knowledge or consent, so they have the most privacy from the people who control their lives while they're on the internet, and kids not having the real world experiences they should have, not knowing how to connect with other people irl, not feeling comfortable leaving the house because of the horror story lies their parents told them to make them ok with the surveillance they were inflicting on their kids. Kids these days are growing up in the fucking panopticon when they should be out in the woods playing with knives or stealing cigarettes from their older sibling and going out to an empty parking lot to smoke them or whatever and that shit is sticking with them into adulthood. Things that were "tee hee we could get in trouble isn't this so fun and daring" in the 1990s and 2000s have become in the 2010s and 2020s things that are "If I do that without texting my parents some sort of lie to excuse where my location is my parent's car will pull up and I will get grounded for the next two weeks."
Like even when I was 19 I had a 16 year old friend who would volunteer their time at a food shelf and that's how we knew each other. We would talk about dungeons and dragons together, and the game store was 4 blocks from the food shelf. One day we left the food shelf earlier than they had told their parents they would and they got punished for that. We were literally just going to look at dungeons and dragons miniatures and dice, which was self evident if you could see where we started and how far we walked and where too. I have to assume that this isn't uncommon. It's wrong, but it's not uncommon.
Ok it has become apparent to me that people do not understand what I mean by conservative on accident.
Nobody my age is voting republican. Let's be clear on that. With the exception of a small minority of gamer gaters and people who were raised in actual cults most people my age are either commies or good liberals who votes straight blue down the ticket. This is because of the greta thunberg effect. We're all afraid of dying of thirst because there's no water anymore at the age of 35. Wealthy white children are no longer safe with the republican party which has become less of a political party and more of a death cult, and white children are less wealthy than they used to be (I specify white because POC by in large never voted for the party of the southern strategy for obvious reasons). We as a generation are so insanely blue that they're trying to raise the voting age to 25 about it.
This liberalism and party affiliation doesn't preclude them from being conservative on accident. What I mean by that is... Well
No kink at pride is a great example. The assumption that pride should exist at all makes them think that they're immune to conservative logic but they're still trying to enforce a dominant ideology onto a minority group. That person who made the tweet about how you shouldn't have sex in houses where there are children in the other room and if you can't avoid it you're a sex addict. That's a great example of like straight up puritanism coming out of the mouth of someone who proports themselves to be a leftist
If you ever see a discourse that feels like an obvious psyop as an adult and you can't understand why these supposed leftist youths are falling for it it's because that kid has never had sex in the woods and had to try to buy plan b under their parent's nose. My generation is dumb about sex. We're dumb about drugs. We're dumb about theft. We moralize literally everything. We're so dumb about stranger danger that we never learned how to community organize so while the vast vast majority of us are crushed by existential dread about debt and climate change but we never do anything about it because we just don't know how to organize because we're raised to see everyone else as a threat and we never went to or organized parties as teens because our parents would always know and stop us.
They managed to invent a generation that hates capitalism but fully buys into individualism and who is supportive of queer people and way less monogamous than previous generations but who still buys into the base assumptions of the nuclear family and thinks sex is evil. The levels of politics going on here are way weirder and stupider and more complicated than "young people vote republican and watch Fox news"
I've never seen anybody explain it so well
Implicit storytelling in two tweets:
Yeah. They did that. I bet the ‘clarification’ came as a result of some strong legal threats.
So be aware in the coming weeks that if your favorite actor reportedly says something shitty about the strike that makes your blood boil? Check the sources. There’s going to be a lot of uh, spin in the news.
if capitalism didn’t exist what would your dream job be. btw if you say something like ‘engineer’ i’ll kill you
memento-mari-1402
What’s… what’s wrong with engineer. Do you honestly think people will stop needing bridges. or water filtration plants. or electricity. or assistive devices. or. or. or. post-capitalism OP.
Hundreds Killed as Building Collapses in Leftist Commune
I DO dream of labour. There is worthwhile and meaningful work in the world, and I want to do it!
In a post-capitalism world there will still be rivers to cross, sick people to nurse, crops to be harvested, computers to program, and buildings to maintain. Some of the work will be dull and unfulfilling and necessary!
But you’d better HOPE we get enough engineers and building inspectors and fire safety marshals and janitors and maintenance workers and bricklayers and auto mechanics and electricians. Otherwise you’d better be ready to drastically reduce your standard of living.
People confuse “non-capitalist” (ie organized for motives other than the acquisition of profit within a model where those who accumulate capital are necessary for large enterprises) with “magically somehow work will be unneeded” and also apparently get confused about how actually right now one of the problems we have is that lots of people who’d LIKE to be engineers and indeed would be GOOD engineers have no opportunity to do so because of the structures of power and opportunities that underlie our current system.
Guys, the jobs that are now considered “good” will still be attractive. Because they’re not just attractive for money. I’m a programmer. I’d like to be a programmer. Give me the dull coding jobs. It’s fine. That’s what I like doing.
I can imagine there are people who love stocking shelves. There are days when I’d love doing that, too.
I can imagine there will still be secretaries who love organizing others as their purpose in life. So they, think doctors, have the time to focus on their thing, which is helping people get/stay healthy.
And I can imagine someone wanting to be that doctor, willingly learn for years about how humans work, and then cope with people’s health, trying to improve it.
“But nobody would want to…” Yes they do. People love danger, dirt, repetitive tasks, responsibility, stress, talking to people all day, hiding away in a dark basement all day, working with animals (with all implications), working at a computer all day, …
For everything that needs doing, you’ll find someone who loves doing it. It’s more about finding enough people for the things that are needed, where they’re needed, when they’re needed.
My mother is a bureaucrat and a farmer and living her dream life tending to her garden in her free time just as much as when she’s at work doing what she herself drscribed as “the most dry, administrative, paperworky position you can find” and she said this to me with such excitement and joy. For every job you can imagine, it’s somebody’s dream job.
