Y’know, Frank, I may be forced out of my position one day, and a replacement will have to be found.
yall if he gets murdered? you will know why
Start Transcript
I’m still brand new to Congress. I’ve been there 100 days. And I don’t know if I’m not supposed to say this out loud, but it’s true and important. And if you don’t know this, you need to, it’s really clear from working there for just a few months that most of the really angry voices in Congress are totally faking it. These people who have built their brands around being perpetually outraged. It’s an act. I’ve seen a bunch of examples. Here’s one. I’ve been in committee meetings that are open to the press and committee meetings that are closed. The same people who act like maniacs during the open meetings are suddenly calm and rational during the closed ones. Why? Because there aren’t any cameras in the closed meetings, so their incentives are different. What I’ve seen is that members of Congress are surrounded by negative incentives. There are rewards for bad behavior. You know what the big one is? Being able to reach you? The big thing that modern media and modern politicians have aren’t is that if they can keep you angry, they’ll hold your attention. And they both want your attention. So if you’re a politician and you show certain media outlets that you can help them keep their audience angry, they’ll give you their audience. And because so many politicians are willing to play that game, now they’re in competition with each other to see how fake angry they can be.
So that’s real bad, but here’s something good. What I love about this about communicating with you directly is that the incentives are different. They can be positive, they can be about speaking to you with respect and real information, and in a normal tone of voice. Because if I can talk to you directly, I don’t have to yell, and if you don’t have to yell to be heard, the whole conversation changes. So going forward, when you hear some enraged member of Congress say something absurd, your first question shouldn’t be, “How can they possibly believe that?” It should be, “Do we think they actually do?” Because they probably don’t. And for those who want to see politics look less like WWE, I will keep you posted.
Transcript Ends
Its been NINE YEARS and i still dont think anyone knows exactly why teen titans was cancelled
texasuberalles
Same reason Young Justice and Green Lantern The Animated Series were canceled: Girls liked it. Bruce Timm finally up an’ said it out loud in an interview a while back when he was asked why in the hell GL:TAS had been canceled when it was doing so well on every front; DC’s animation department has institutionally decided that feee-males don’t/can’t/shouldn’t like superheroes, so even if a show is drawing in great viewership numbers and has great toy sales, once they find out that it’s popular with women and girls, they pull the plug on it. Cartoon Network loved Teen Titans— two million viewers for new episodes will do that— and wanted a Season Six, and the production staff was already in the planning stages for it; they were going to have a big arc about Terra and why she was Living Normal, and do a lot more with the extended Titans team members.
This is so fucked up.
To elaborate on this point a bit, the reason this happens is that modern television merchandising aims for total market segregation.
In a nutshell, it’s much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.
This is why children’s toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits they’ve decided to use is “boys versus girls”.
Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? That’s market segregation in action.
The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; they’re viewed as “stealing” the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully “owns” it.
This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? It’s not just artificial, it’s deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying “this is the ways it’s always been” or “this is just what the market wants”, they’re lying through their teeth - this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.
(Interestingly, the reverse isn’t always true: if a specifically girl-targeted show unexpectedly becomes popular with boys, sometimes rather than being cancelled, its merchandising will shift to court the male collector’s market. TV execs are so sexist, even their sexism is sexist.)
gayna-scully
It gets worse.
Paul Dini, a writer/producer said this on a podcast: “ That’s the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I’ll just lay it on the line: that’s the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, it’s like, ‘we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys’—this is the network talking—’one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as boys, but right there.’”
Cartoon network and Warner brothers deliberately made the conscious decision to dumb down their female characters because they want to push female viewers away. In fact, Tower Prep was cancelled because it had too many female viewers because the writers made too many well written female characters.
So shitty representation of girls isn’t something that just happens. It’s the result of deliberate planning just so the execs can make more money.
And it’s not just cartoon network. I mean, why do you think Nick fucked over Korra so badly? Remember them telling Bryke they didn’t want a female Avatar? Why do you think there are no Korra figurines or action figures?
I tried to put them roughly in order of existence (except for IRL haha). Also I realize that ao3 technically is also a "multifandom website" like wattpad/ffn, but it just Feels Different. Also no shade to the other poll. I know I'm not the only crotchety old person in those notes.
I saw the Barbie and Ken mugshot and simply couldn’t help myself 🤭 This is actually my first time drawing Nadir 🤔
the most potent, profound satirization of american christianity in history is the creation and success of mormonism
joe smith saw what americans liked about christianity and was like. fuck it lets just do a full reboot. here comes racist papa christ and his american angel pals. You Have To Give Money To God
when i was a kid there was lots of gulf storms down the bay and my grimgram told me when it thunders thats because angels r bowling and jesus got a strike
mormonism is like if you made a whole religion out of whatever compels grandmas to act like that
mormons believe native americans are jewish people who got turned brown for angering god but go off
they WHAT?
google mormonism skin of blackness
it's the entire premise of their holy text
IS THAT WHY ALL OF STEPHANIE MEYERS NATIVE CHARACTERS HAVE EXTREMLY BIBLICAL JEWISH NAMES. SCREAM.
Serve the meal and serve the maid! 🍎
A speedpaint video of this will be available at my Patreon on June 1st!
Piracy is a skill and it’s one that’s going to be more and more important to have as legal channels for watching old TV shows or playing old games continue to disappear. Learn to emulate games now. I taught myself to do it when I was 10. Go on archive.org and download every PS1 game for free. Learn to torrent, learn how to discreetly send large files to your friends, learn how to get into private trackers, learn how to jailbreak your devices. The more you know now the easier it’ll be later.
You may think it cruel but when a white witch pisses me off I go through her etsy listings for native bird feathers and forward it to fish and wildlife services
Sweats in Salem witch descendant
Keep sweating girl the game wardens on his way
Update! Day late because this is probably the hardest page I’ve had to draw so far! Interiors are hard! It’s not perfect but I hope my hard work shows through the mistakes :,)
There was so much planning (years of planning) that went into this one goofy ah establishing shot so I’m hoping and praying it does well! Please share/engage with the post if you feel so inclined <3
@thedrawingduke on Instagram + tumblr
I love "i would kill for you" ship dynamics but what about "i would stop killing" ship dynamic??
I would lay down my sword for you. I would change my nature and go against everything i've known. I would resist the easy way out of solving my problems. I would give up the adrenaline of battle to stay by your side and make tea instead. I'm not sure I know who I am without a weapon in my hand because I've had to fight for so long but for you I'm willing to try and figure this out.
It must be hard. To put down your weapon that's protected you for so long. It's allowed you to stay alive it's kept you from getting hurt--physically and mentally. Because you've never had to worry about a real relationship if you think you'll be dead at the next battle. And you feel naked without it and it feels like you're ripping off an extension of yourself. Are you even whole without it? Are you worthy of being loved if you can't prove it by risking your life? And yet they've found someone who's asking them for something much harder than dying in battle on their behalf. They've found someone who wants them to live. And that's much more terrifying.
Phantom of the Opera + Succession quotes, pt 1/???