dancing in the dust

ILY: I love you

ILYSM: I love you so much

DYPI: Do you permit it?

me, reaching into my dresser drawer for black pants: I hope this isn’t the pair with big holes worn in the inner thighs

Marie Kondo, gently over my shoulder: why is a pair of pants you find unwearable still in your dresser drawer

me: oh shit that’s right!! The dresser is for clothes that under some circumstance I might conceivably wear!!

Marie Kondo, beaming proudly: Yes, that’s correct!! These pants must have been your favorites. How wonderful that they were so comfortable and practical that you wore them out. But now since they no longer function as pants, you should move them from the drawer where you keep your functioning pants!

me: Yes thanks I got it they’re in the fabric basket now

Marie Kondo, fading back into the darkness: I love what you’ve done with the kitchen!!

The notion of KonMari as some creepy semi-embodied but entirely benevolent spirit, like a well-intentioned Bloody Mary, is so perfect and wonderful.

Marie Kondo has the same powers but the exact opposite energy of the Duolingo Owl.

YES.

Marie Kondo: Your room isn’t very clean, but that’s okay, I love mess! Does this spark joy?

Duolingo Owl: I wrote the ransom note in Spanish, and if you have to use Google Translate to read it, your kid gets it. You broke your streak. I’ll break your neck.

Marie Kondo holding your child, while standing on the remains of the Duolingo Owl : The Bird did not spark joy

Slavic and Shadow and Bone Rant

When you are not Slavic enough for a Slavic project

For years, Hollywood has been trying to erase Slavic people and Eastern Europe as whole from their definition of diversity. But when they decided to include this group of ethnicity, it is always the villain, or the stupid guy, or all the Russian stereotypes even though the character come from a different country. And basically there is not a proper Slavic representation in media, where someone can look at and say “She/he looks like me” and etc.

*Spoilers for Shadow and Bone*

Leigh Bardugo tried to use the Slavic culture but went wrong on so many levels. The only close character who was a piece of a Slavic character is yet again the villain, the Darkling, especially his hate-love relationship with his mother Bagrah. Darkling would always fight with her but at the end when she jumped to save Alina, it shows that he cared for her. Plus they were together for centuries just like a Slavic relationship between mother and son.

Another thing, that LB did wrong was changing the last names, Starkov for Alina and Morazova for the Darkling which for many Slavic readers is totally offending. For females, the last name it ends with -va and for males, it ends with -v. She tried to explain that it was the world of fantasy but she still erase a big part of the Slavic culture. LB could easily choose a gender neutral lass names.

Through out the whole Grishaverse whe didn’t see enough of the Ravkan culture. The only thing we saw was a poor country and an industrially behind country, like most of the Slavic counties. She could had include some of the Slavic traditions or behaviors but she decided to ignore them and focus on the bad side of the Slavic people.

The adaptation of the books was even worse. They choose to film in Hungary (which is not a Slavic country). If Ravka is based on a Slavic country then it is more logical to chose a Slavic place to film it, to match the environment. They also cast all British cast and only one Slavic who has less then 10 minutes of screen time for the whole season. In my opinion the actors did an amazing job in portraying the characters but the British accent it was pulled me off. Again if Ravkan is based on Russia then they should have a Russian accent. Even though they didn’t cast a Slavic actors, they still can do accent.

It is really sad as a Slavic person to find so little of my culture and if so to be always portrayed as a bad guy or a stupid one. As if we are not capable of doing the right things and we are less the other cultures. The Slavic culture and landmarks are unique to the world and people deserve to see the good side of this countries.

I did that job once.

What are your pronouns and would you like to join my union

I love how arthur orders his knights to search the stables and the kitchens for Merlin just to get them out of his way lmao he has zero faith that Merlin might be doing his job at those places and knows where to exactly find him. I love them so much.

bestie is just becoming the chiller version of comrade

we have nothing to lose but our chains, bestie

entirely lost the plot

i see a lot of posts and threads out of context about this kind of thing but it's important to not just be like "lol men r silly/weak/insane" because there's a whole political context to this stuff. it's not just random south korean men that are saying this it's coming from ilbe, the alt right mra groups that have gotten bigger in response to the huge south korean feminist movement that's been growing for the last decade.

it's their strategy to do social media campaigns against celebrities with very obviously over the top accusations because they get a big backlash from the feminist opposition and any man who agreed with ilbe even a little are offended by it and more easily recruited. and the recruitment is working with such a huge part of the male south korean gp that companies have to apologize to them or ilbe will escalate.

the way US/english language journalists have been reporting on this is very dangerous treating it as an easy story for clicks because it's obviously ridiculous to a "western progressive" audience that there's so much violent vitriol for things like short hair. but the entire ilbe movement is in service of US imperialism and reinforces the fascist capitalist ideology that the US perpetuates in south korea. ilbe's primary targets are lgbt people, women who aren't gender conforming, and south korean leftist organizers all under the umbrella of "commies". it's US anticommunism that's fueling this and US reporting is contributing to the recruitment process.

the full thread is here:

this is a small scale example of what i'm talking about. this is one of many many publications that might not necessarily have "bad intentions" but are in service of the imperial media structure with the way they interpret korean news. this is a tiny subscriber only newsletter that posts stories that are uncredited translations of official korean news and from "actually interacting with the korean public". there's no way there's a single korean person on this writing team. and this stuff is getting retweeted onto my tl on my kpop acc, there's 124 quote tweets from mostly kpop fans and a handful of korean feminists saying stuff like "no wonder their penises are so small" and "that makes a lot of sense considering (insert horrible things korean kpop or kdrama men have done)". letting english speaking consumers of kmedia treat every korean political issue as a kpop thing to consume and making it entirely too easy for ilbe to recruit. it's all the kpop publications that do this stuff, i've posted a soompi article about jaejae's incident where thousands of men petitioned she be fired from sbs.

this is another thing they tweeted:

this framing is 100% colonial 100% US imperialist. i clicked into the article and it implies that south koreans are naturally untrusting of the government but moon jaein's strong response to covid is changing that. this also promotes the idea that south korea is primitive and conservative and the US democracy is a beacon of progressive politics and south korea is finally catching up. the reality is that every single south korean president has been a US-backed military dictator or otherwise economically manipulated by US interests into violence against korean people. koreans do not trust the government because it is run by US collaborators and the descendents of japanese collaborators, we are still under a neocolonial regime. also the US's vaccine sanctions delayed moon jaein's vaccine plans by months and the south korean gp is responding very negatively to it so this being tweeted on july 30, 2021 is outdated news

What does it take to teach a bee to use tools? A little time, a good teacher and an enticing incentive. Read more here: http://to.pbs.org/2mpRUAz

Credit: O.J. Loukola et al., Science (2017)

@clockworkrobotic

“Friend? Friend push ball? I push ball. I do good.”

Bees.  Smart enough to push a ball, not smart enough to not be fooled by a stick masquerading as a bee. 

maybe they know and they’re just being polite

Other dimensional beings are undoubtedly amazed at what human beings will accept as human beings too. “But it’s just a stick with a person on it.”

#excuse me neil but what the FUCK was that #thanks for that terrifying thought (nooby-banana)

NEIL WHY. WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT.

This turns up on my dashboard. And I read it and am impressed that someone writes exactly the post that I’d write, without actually reading the name of the person who posted it.

And then I’m puzzled at all the Neil Why’s, and realise that this was me in the Wayback Long-ago.

At least I’m consistent.

And, I should point out, we are no closer to being able to spot the extra-dimensional stick “people” who move unobserved among us.