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@savage-magpie

“Wake up early. Drink coffee. Work hard. Be ambitious. Keep your priorities straight, your mind right and your head up. Do well, live well and dress really well. Do what you love, love what you do. It is time to start living.”
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So George Soros dumped all of his Tesla stock, and the first thing Elon Musk does is start whining and boosting the posts of other white nationalists.

Weird how Elon Musk, the white South African billionaire who got his start from exploitative emerald mines, keeps amplifying the tweets of antisemites and anti-Black racists, huh?

Anyway, one thing that enduring Donald Trump for the past four years has taught me: whenever Elon starts making waves on Twitter, we should always start looking for whatever it is that he’s really trying to distract us from.

For example:

The U.S. territory asked Manhattan federal court Judge Jed Rakoff in the filing to allow it to serve Musk with the subpoena with Tesla's registered agent.

That subpoena demands Musk turn over any documents showing communication involving him, JPMorgan and Epstein, as well as "all Documents reflecting or regarding Epstein's involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for consensual sex."

Minecraft seed: -1598879527814851809

This one is a special one!

First we have this fantastic array of floating islands

Then farther out to the opposite direction there are some absolutely HUGE mountains, probably the biggest i've ever seen. i tried several ways of showing how gigantic they are with the limits of bedrock's ability to render distances, but the screenshots don't do it justice properly. they're ENORMOUS

and there's a cherry grove!

Trail ruin that just generated in a cave that leaves almost the whole thing exposed perfectly

In another spot there is ANOTHER trail ruin perfectly exposed in a cave right next to a GAPING HOLE that opens out into a huge cave, and if you follow the waterfalls, you will find another huge cave right below it that goes all the way to the bottom of the world

discovering the queer country scene has honestly been so healing because most queer musicians i've seen recommended for years i just couldn't really connect with because it wasn't the sort of music i listened to or had investment in and with queer country it's like. yes. this is the language i speak in. this is Fuck You, I Belong Here Too, not just as a queer person in the country but as a rural person among (sub)urban queers, and saying it with a laugh. when will my hometown take pride in me, goddamn it

Drop the list!!

FIRST: rachel holst does the adobe & teardrops blog as well as the rainbow rodeo newsletter & zine. look into the black opry also, there are plenty of black queer country/folk/americana artists & there is a lot of collaboration between them and other queer country/folk/americana musicians

my personal list:

  • adeem the artist (especially the new album, white trash revelry)
  • paisley fields (stay away from my man is a good old fashioned honky tonk jam about gay on gay violence)
  • jake blount (the new faith is an afrofuturist album using roots music to explore life after climate collapse, HIGHLY recommend)
  • sarah shook & the disarmers (especially the album sidelong, ESPECIALLY the songs fuck up & dwight yoakam)
  • lavender country (everything but especially cryin' these cocksucking tears. patrick haggerty sadly passed in 2022 and we lost a real one. he self-described as a screaming marxist bitch)
  • flamy grant (okay so. bible belt baby is Technically a christian album that i was tricked into listening to. but listen. what did you drag me into is an instant classic)
  • mercy bell (especially who said we were friends. i can't hear the lyric "mea culpa/here's a gulpa/my drink in your face" and NOT recommend it)
  • amythyst kiah (if you haven't heard black myself by now what even are you doing. go listen to it)
  • do you want to speedrun a depressive episode as a queer woman who fears you may have too much in common with your father? listen to i drink by mary gauthier now
  • karen & the sorrows (there is a lot to recommend karen pittelman and the work she has done for queer country artists but i'm a useless lesbian so i'm submitting for consideration a photo of the red dress from the mv for guaranteed broken heart that i think about a normal amount:

King Arthur legend of the sword said “forget the idea of Arthur as a kind, patient king” and gave us an Arthur filled with rage, who is ambitious and driven, crude but friendly, protective of his loved ones, calculating, willing to forgive and forget and make allies. Willing to die to save the life of the prostitutes who raised him. He makes the best of every situation he’s in. He lost everything, gained prestige in the gutter, and lost everything again. I love him. The Mage says “you are resisting the sword. It is not resisting you” because he became a leader, a fucking king, while being raised as a bastard nobody far from his throne

Mr. Flanagan, I’d like to ask a question and I deeply hope that it does not offend or upset you. I am strongly considering canceling my Netflix subscription due to their new password sharing policy. However, Midnight Mass is one of my favorite shows of all time and I know it isn’t available on DVD, and I’m also profoundly anticipating your take on my favorite Edgar Allen Poe story. So I wanted to ask your take on people accessing your work through, uh, other means. If it’s something that’s offensive to you or will harm you or the other people who work so hard on these shows, I’ll happily keep my Netflix just so that I can keep supporting your work. I respect you far too much as an artist to do otherwise.

Again, I really hope I’m not upsetting you by asking this question. Thank you for everything, and I hope you’re having a great day!

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Hi there - no offense taken whatsoever, in fact I think this is a very interesting and important question.

So. If you asked me this a few years ago, I would have said "I hate piracy and it is hurting creators, especially in the independent space." I used to get in Facebook arguments with fans early in my career when people would post about seeing my work on torrent sites, especially when that work was readily available for rent and purchase on VOD.

Back in 2014, my movie Before I Wake was pirated and leaked prior to any domestic release, and that was devastating to the project. It actually made it harder to find distribution for the film. By the time we were able to get distribution in the US, the film had already been so exposed online that the best we could hope for was a Netflix release. Netflix stepped in and saved that movie, and for that I will always be grateful to them.

However. Working in streaming for the past few years has made me reconsider my position on piracy. You could say my feelings on the matter have "evolved."

In the years I worked at Netflix, I tried very hard to get them to release my work on blu-ray and DVD. They refused at every turn.

It became clear very fast that their only priority was subscriptions, and that they were actively hostile to the idea of physical media. While they had some lingering obligations on certain titles, or had partnerships who still valued physical media, and had flirted with releasing juggernaut hits like Stranger Things, that wasn't at all their priority. In fact, they were very actively trying to eliminate those kinds of releases from their business model.

This is a very dangerous point of view. While companies like Netflix pride themselves on being disruptors, and have proven that they can affect great change in the industry, they sometimes fail to see the difference between disruption and damage. So much that they can find themselves, intentionally or not, doing enormous harm to the very concept of film preservation.

The danger comes when a title is only available on one platform, and then - for whatever reason - is removed.

We have already seen this happen. And it is only going to happen more and more. Titles exclusively available on streaming services have essentially been erased from the world. If those titles existed on the marketplace on physical media, like HBO's Westworld, the loss is somewhat mitigated (though only somewhat.) But when titles do not exist elsewhere, they are potentially gone forever.

The list of titles that have been removed from streaming services is growing quickly, quietly, and insidiously.

So to answer your question - today, I am very grateful that my Netflix originals are available through - uh - other means.

The issue of password sharing is a different one, but suffice to say I do not blame you one bit for considering canceling your subscription.

I still believe that where we put our dollars matters. Renting or buying a piece of work that you like is essential. It is casting a vote, encouraging studios - who only speak the language of money - to invest more effort into similar work. If we show up to support distinct, unique, exciting work, it encourages them to make more of it. It's as simple as that. If we don't show up, or if they can't hear our voice because we are casing our vote "silently" through torrent sites or other means - it makes it unlikely that they will take a chance to create that kind of work again.

Which is why I typically suggest that if you like a movie you've seen through - uh - other means, throw a few dollars at that title on a legitimate platform. Rent it. Purchase it. Support it.

But if services like Netflix offer no avenue for that kind of support, and can (and will) remove content from their platform forever... frankly, I think that changes the rules.

Netflix will likely never release the work I created for them on physical media. I've tried for years, but have met with the same apathy throughout.

Some of you may say "wait, aren't The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor available on blu-ray and DVD?" Yes, they are, because they were co-produced with Paramount. Paramount retained the physical media rights for those titles, and were permitted to release them (though they had to wait a calendar year after their launches on Netflix). I'm so, so grateful that Paramount was able to release and protect those titles. (I'm also grateful that those releases include extended cuts, deleted scenes, and commentary tracks. There are a number of fantastic benefits to physical media releases.)

But a lot of the other work I did there are Netflix originals, without any other studio involvement. Those titles - like Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and the upcoming Fall of the House of Usher - along with my Netflix exclusive and/or original movies Before I Wake and Gerald's Game - have no such protections. The physical media releases of those titles are entirely at Netflix's discretion, and unfortunately Netflix has made their position clear.

There was a brief, shining moment when Netflix told me they were going to release a "Flanaverse" (man I hate that word) blu-ray set - I was very excited. But as abruptly as they had told me they were going to do it, they retracted their offer with a casual, dismissive "oh, never mind." There was very little context offered, simply that the company had changed its mind and weren't interested in physical media for my stuff after all.

My movie Hush recently disappeared from the platform, and is currently not available anywhere in the world. That's a slightly different situation, as the reason it disappeared is that Netflix's license agreement ran out, which gave us the opportunity to shop it to new homes - hopefully homes with more support for physical media (and you better believe that's exactly what we're doing right now). But that's a fortunate case - Hush was not a Netflix original. A lot of my other work is, and we'll have no such opportunity to extract them. As a result, I've gone looking for archival copies of Midnight Mass (and some other work) for myself. And that led me to some "bootleg" blu-rays created by people who operate through - uh - other means.

The result is that I now have three copies of Midnight Mass on blu-ray in my collection. The quality is excellent. The people who created these even went through the trouble to make animated menus and cover art - and I have to say they're quite good. I found these online, it wasn't difficult, and it wasn't expensive. I'm told the quality of torrent sites is pretty great. And honestly, at this point, given Netflix's position on the mater... I'm very glad they exist.

At the moment, Netflix seems content to leave Before I Wake, Gerald's Game, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club on the service, where they still draw audiences. I don't think there is a plan to remove any of them anytime soon. But plans change, the industry changes - hell, I've watched the executive structure at Netflix change so many times since I got there I don't even recognize the company anymore.

The point is things change, and each of those titles - should they be removed from the service for any reason - are not available anywhere else. If that day comes - if Netflix's servers are destroyed, if a meteor hits the building, if they are bought out by a competitor and their library is liquidated - I don't know what the circumstances might be, I just know that if that day comes, some of the work that means the most to me in the world would be entirely erased.

Or, what if we aren't so catastrophic in our thinking? What if it the change isn't so total? What if Netflix simply bumps into an issue with the license they paid for music (like the Neil Diamond songs that play such a crucial role in Midnight Mass), and decide to leave the show up but replace the songs?

This has happened before as well - fans of Northern Exposure can get the show on DVD and blu-ray, but the music they heard when the series aired has been replaced due to the licensing issues. And the replacements - chosen for their low cost, not for creative reasons - are not improvements. What if the shows are just changed, and not by creatives, but by business affairs executives?

All to say that physical media is critically important. Having redundancy in the marketplace is critically important. The more platforms a piece of work is available on, the more likely it is to survive and grow its audience. At this point, if a studio refuses to make them available, I am fully on board with any means that protect and archive the work, and to make the work available to an audience outside of that platform's exclusive base.

As I said, things change - my overall deal at Netflix ran its course, and I'm now at Amazon, who have a somewhat different perspective on physical media. Their business model is not built entirely on subscribers; far from it. I'm hoping very much that the work I create with them will meet a different fate, and be supported in a different manner.

As for Netflix, I hope sincerely that their thinking on this matter evolves, and that they value the content they spend so much money creating enough to protect it for posterity. That's up to them, it's their studio, it's their rules. But I like to think they may see that light eventually, and realize that exclusivity in a certain window is very cool... but exclusivity in perpetuity limits the audience and endangers the work.

All to say that if you decide to cancel your Netflix subscription, that's entirely your choice - I'm not here telling you to cancel it, or to keep it, for that matter. On that point, I am utterly agnostic.

But I will say that if you do cancel it, I am profoundly grateful that my work is available somewhere else. And if you take advantage of that, that is absolutely, positively, unequivocally fine with me.

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One advantage of not really having a strong sense of gender identity is that you’re very [shrug emoji] about how people gender you. Sometimes people call me by she/her pronouns and sometimes they go with he/him pronouns and on the internet people often default to they/them, and neither option is entirely right but also, fuck if I know what would be right, and I don’t particularly care. Therefore I’m perfectly happy to outsource my gender identity to the people around me who actually need to figure out which box to put me in. I don’t need to talk about myself in third person, so really my pronouns sound like a you problem.

My pronouns are I/me and the rest is for someone else to deal with because I have better things to do.

Very fond of macrolabels, like “queer”, that provide zero extra information. Is it genderqueer? Is it romantic/sexual orientation queer? Is it queer as in “none of your fucking business what’s in my pants and what I do with it and with whom”?

This is actually probably the first time I’ve ever read something that accurately describes my relationship with gender--ie, ‘my gender is me and my pronouns are a you problem’--so thank you for that!

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and like ... actors are actors. Their whole thing is pretending to be other people? Can an actor pretend to be an elf or royalty or an alien but not queer? As long as they’re taking the role seriously, it’s fine.

if a straight person sees something meaningful, beautiful and worthy of emulation in the queer experience, that’s a good thing.

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Study shows Millennial Men do not think of women as their equals

A majority of millennial men failed to see women as equals, according to the study, which looked at how college biology students viewed their classmates’ intelligence and achievements, the Harvard Business Review reported.

Among the findings:

  • In every biology class surveyed, a man was seen as the most celebrated student, even in instances where women earned significantly better grades.
  • Men were also found to overestimate the intelligence of their male classmates over that of female ones.
  • Men continued exaggerating their assessments of the male peers, despite unequivocal evidence that their female peers were performing better.
  • Women, conversely, weren’t found to display a bias: Their assessments of fellow classmates tended to be spot-on.

The National Institutes of Health researchers pointed out that female STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors drop out at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts.

“The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the social environment women experience in the classroom,” they wrote.

Still, scores of men are under the impression that they’ve become the target of reverse sexism. Conservative columnist John Hawkins ranted in Town Hall last year:

“Men have it rougher in America than most people realize. In part, that’s because they’re one of the few groups (along with white people, conservatives, and Christians) it’s cool to crap on at every opportunity. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a nonstop assault on masculinity in America.”

But research has confirmed the reality of gender bias against women. A staggering 90 percent of women reported experiencing gender harassment in the workplace, a 2010 University of Michigan study found. The results suggest that such harassment had the purpose of driving women out of jobs and not the generally assumed motivation of trying to draw women into relationships.

“One could argue that, in these instances, ‘sexual harassment is used both to police and discipline the gender outlaw: the woman who dares to do a man’s job is made to pay,’” the researchers wrote, quoting an article by Katherine M. Franke, an associate professor of law at the University of Arizona College of Law.

As for millennial men specifically, they have been less accepting of female leaders than their older male counterparts, according to a 2014 survey of more than 2,000 adults residing in the United States, the Harvard Business Review reports.

Half of Millenial men said their careers would take priority over their partners’. 

Three-fourths of women, on the other hand, said their careers would be at least as important as their husbands’.

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cutiequeercris

oh look its the shit women have been saying all the damn time and antifeminists stamp their feet and cry about

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kaylapocalypse

Yikes

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Scientific studies confirming these issues aren’t new or rare yet said issues are still denied most fiercely by people who claim to just be “logical.”

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I am obsessed with this.

So because parkour is such a ridiculously male dominated sport, the "correct technique" for a lot of these movements that you're taught when you become an instructor plays to a male body's strengths: upper body strength, higher center of gravity, etc.

She demolishes this course by moving in ways that make sense for her body. She doesn't muscle her way up to her over a wall, she just throws a leg up over the wall. She doesn't use upper body strength to do the salmon ladder, she uses her hips!!! And it's fucking incredible.

So many girls and young women walk away from parkour because every movement caters to the strengths of men, because doing what makes sense for their bodies is seen as "bad technique" to be trained away.

If pre-transition me had seen this I would have cried tears of joy.