Neat!

There is a forbidden type of magic out there. It isn’t forbidden because it’s inherently evil, or forces you to lose your humanity, or requires human sacrifices - it’s just forbidden because it’s annoying as heck to fight against.

“Ma’am, I really must insist that you pay for the room and board I’ve been giving you! It’s been a week!”

“Fine, fine,” I grumble. “I have a few options for payment: I could give you paper money, cheap gaudy jewelry, chocolate coins, spiders, some pretty seashells-”

“Spiders????” he repeats, baffled.

“Spiders it is, then,” I agree equitably, and with a wave of my hand the bed I’ve been sleeping in for the last week turns into a writhing mass of various spiders.

Worth it.

—

“Stop right there! You’re under arrest for fraud, destruction of property, and-!”

I yawn. “Didn’t ask, don’t care.” A few gestures, and the guards’ swords are all transmuted into spiders, and then they’re too busy to worry about little ol’ me.

—

“You have insulted my honor and humiliated me in front of my children! I demand satisfaction! I demand a wizard’s duel!”

Shrugging, I say, “Sure, okay, whatever. Right here and now okay?”

The pompous wizard-noble blinks. “I- you don’t want to prepare? Get your wizard’s staff or anything?”

“Nah, I’m pretty good with somatic gestures.”

“Well, if you’re sure… here and now then! Have at you!” He slams his staff down on the ground dramatically, a small shockwave of fire radiating out from the impact.

So of course, I turn his staff into spiders.

“AHHHH WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK”

“So if you’re too busy screaming to cast spells, does that mean I win?”

“AUGH ONE OF THEM BIT ME”

“I’m taking that as a yes.”

—

After that, they start coming at me in waves, with cheap wands and staves and swords and bows bought in bulk, hoping to exhaust my magical reserves so they can get close enough to put a magic inhibitor on me.

They did not expect my reserves to be as vast as they were, not did they expect me to be able to transmute the inhibitors themselves into spiders.

“Didn’t you take Magic Basics in wizard college?” I yell at the panicking mages. “Inhibitors aren’t immune to magic until the moment they activate! Serious weak point in the design, tell your magitechnicians to fix that!”

—

So of course they try assassins next.

Poison fails, because I transmute any food and drink I get into spiders and then transmute them back. Pretty easy way to get rid of poison.

So then they try knives in dark alleys. The knives bruise through my full-body spider-silk outfit, but do not penetrate, and they only get one shot before they have bigger problems.

Next is killing me in my sleep. None live to report back that the human-shaped lump under the blankets is actually a mass of highly venomous spiders.

The kingdom throws everything it has at me, and I continue to walk away, heralded by the chittering of spiders and the screams of everyone else.

—

Finally, I stand before the king himself in his overly opulent throne room, and by now he is a broken shell of a man in the face of my unorthodox tactics.

Good.

“What do you want?” he practically sobs. “You’ve singlehandedly redirected the entire crown’s budget for the next three years into replacing every weapon you’ve turned into spiders. Much more and we’ll be invaded by our neighbors! We wouldn’t be able to resist being annexed! So what can I give you to make you stop doing this?!”

I pause and pretend to consider, tapping a finger against my chin thoughtfully. “You know, you sent my brother off to war a few years back. That conflict with the Yughs up north, I believe. He didn’t want to go, so your guards forced him at spearpoint. I haven’t seen him since.”

He seizes on that, as I expected. “Yes, yes, I’ll have him returned right away! Tell me his name and I’ll honorably release him from duty and have him escorted safely home!”

“Oh?” I raise one sardonic eyebrow. “Are you able to bring back the dead now, oh wise and glorious king?”

He pales, and it’s the most satisfying thing I’ve seen in years.

“You have nothing I want,” I growl, letting the anger slip through for the first time in years. “You cannot bring him back, you cannot make up for my loss with all the riches in your kingdom. The only thing I want is to take everything from you, the way you did to me. Your kingdom will bleed out of resources, one of the neighboring countries you’ve been trying to conquer for decades now will take advantage and annex this place, and you will either be executed or forced to work for a living for the first time in your life.”

I glare at him, and he refuses to meet my eyes. “You will lose everything you ever cared about in your life. One spider at a time.”

I transmute his throne and crown into spiders (non-deadly; he doesn’t get to escape my wrath that easily), then turn and walk away, ignoring his screams and sobs.

—

And that’s why, when the Yughs finally annexed the kingdom I grew up in, they preemptively made Transarachnomancy a forbidden magical art. Not sure how they intend to enforce that, mind, but I’m not looking to challenge that. I’ve gotten what I wanted; if some other aspiring mage wants to try and follow in my footsteps, that’s not my problem.

Besides, in terms of magical skill, I’ve always been an outlier anyway. Most mages would be lucky to turn just one knife into a spider at a time; I can turn ten thousand with a few gestures. I doubt anyone will outdo my legacy.

But hey, if you want to try and surpass Georgia of the Spiders? Feel free. I’ll welcome the competition.

IM

Amazing A+ no notes

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

An actual World Heritage Post

how does this post not have a million notes but anyone online can quote it

one week until ten years of Spiders Georg

My 11-year-old couldn't decide what flavor of ramen to make, so I told her to flip a coin. Heads for spicy chicken, tails for beef.

Taking my advice, she flipped a penny, and when it landed on tails she said "Wait! Wait! I did it wrong!"

I told her that she did it right, because the real reason for flipping a coin isn't to let fate decide for you, but because when the coin is in the air, you will suddenly realize what you wanted in the first place.

I'm sure there's a life lesson there somewhere…

But honestly, I have never known her to pass up spicy chicken.

Okay because I keep seeing these posts, I am just gonna cartwheel in here and say something.

It is not inappropriate to be attracted to real people.

Like, entirely setting aside the question of if you think a fantasy character block men is hot, if you are looking at the photos of a real streamer and you've got hearts in your eyes, I can't overemphasize how normal that is. You're good. Don't worry about it.

These people are funny, and they have good voices, and we watch them be entertaining for hours at a time. This is prime real estate for a little crush. And having a crush is fine, the question is about your behaviour once you have a crush.

I am seeing people thinking that having a crush on a streamer means they're dangerously parasocial, or somehow predatory, or abusive, and that ever breathing a word of it is basically sexual harassment. And like, no. Being attracted to real people is not weird. That's arguably less weird than being attracted to fictional characters. The only question is like, once you know that you want to smooch the real person, how do you then treat that person and the people around you?

Seeing a photo of a famous person and thinking "oh hell yeah I want to hold their hand": this is a celebrity crush. I am aroace and I've spent enough time in some people's streams that I start to go "oh man I wonder if they'd like if if we played D&D together" (medusa-flirting). This has happened to regular people looking at attractive famous people probably since someone in the cave man clan was a particularly good hunter and got praise for it. Thoughts in your head don't hurt people. This is fine.

Seeing clips of a famous person and having sexual thoughts about them: this is still a celebrity crush. Your average boring office worker does this with movie stars. Half the people on the bus are doing this with instagram influencers. Runnning a nice r-rated movie in your head is fine, and doesn't hurt anyone. Thoughts in your head still dont' hurt people. This is still fine.

Collecting photos of a famous person and going GOD they're hot to your friends when they're not looking: still a celebrity crush. There is a standing joke in I don't know how many healthy relationships that your partner gets a certain amount of freebies where you could totally cheat if it's Idris Elba, because it's IDRIS ELBA, that's not cheating that's just sense. You can aknowlege someone's sexiness to your friends, and even joke about it, and you're not being predatory, and you're not being inappropriate. Desire is not a crime. People can publically talk about being attracted to a person, and as long as they're not making it that person's problem, they're fine. Having a "hot people" tag on your blog with careful photos gathered from someone's public instagram where they deliberately posted photos of themselves looking hot? I can't over emphasize how fine this is. If people don't want to see hot people on their dash I guess they can unfollow? But you're literally being totally appropriate still.

Getting a nice private group chat with friends who like to talk abouta famous person and talking about how you'd like to knock him up: Look, what else are group chats as adults for? Are you seeing a trend here? As long as you are keeping your attraction to yourself and not making it other people's problem, as long as you're not bothering the real person with it, as long as you aknowledge to yourself that this is never going to happen and this is just a fun fantasy, this is just like, how attraction works. See pretty person, talk about pretty person, have fun with the fictional imaginings you're having— as long as you're not forcing this imagining on someone else, making it their problem, trying to make it real, as long as you know the difference between fiction and real life, you're fine.

Going up to someone's chat and talking about their dick: This is where you cross the line.

Putting NSFW work in someone's fan art tag. Wearing a shirt with porn on it to a meet and greet. Untagging your fanfic so that people who want to read g-rated works about someone are confronted with e-rated works. Asking one of their friends about their relationship status and if they smell good. This is the bad stuff. Don't do THAT. Keep it away from the real person.

The problem is not the attraction, the problem is forcing the attraction on other people. Like, use your brain. There's a segment of attraction that you can put on main, and then there's a segment that you can put on main but you'd better be sure that the person you're talking about is not going to see it, and then there's a segment you should keep for the group chat, but that's just a very basic sliding scale of "how sexual am I being" correlated with "how private am I being about this". If you want to run a full on porn video in your head starring Wilbur Soot, you're not bothering other people with that, you're not being inappropriate. That becomes inappropriate if you are a) putting that in tags where people who don't want to see the porn video would see it b) talking to Wilbur Soot about it. Those are the boundaries. Wait also c) talking to Wilbur Soot's friends about it, don't do that either.

If the person you're attracted to is an adult famous person, like, people being attracted to them is just part of the landscape. I promise an adult celebrity is not sitting in their room being traumatized because people might be thinking about them romantically or sexually. Putting it up in their faces? Bad. Very bad. I hate it. Don't do it. But I see people freaking out about thoughts. Thoughts aren't real. They do not exist in the real world. You can do what you fuckin' want in your thoughts and you are not hurting people.

Like I know we don't want to be inappropriate with streamers, but that doesn't mean that any sexual or romantic thoughts about them are forbidden, or that mild "GOD he's cute" or picspams on main are hurting people, or that off in a closed group of fellow adult enthusiasts you can't be like "so I think streamer would be submissive if I was domming him" and everyone can be like "oh you'd dom him so well". As long as you're keeping it away from people who are bothered by it, you're fine.

Attraction to real people is normal and how attraction works. You're not hurting people if you think they're cute. You're not hurting people if you want to fuck them, either, as long as you're not making them interact with that desire. This is just a simple matter of keeping the higher-rated material away from the people involved.

Attraction to real people isn't inappropriate. You're fine.

Excellent tags from @leafcabbage

tiktok’s algorithm is trying to give me a heart attack

“if no art makes you feel anything, make your own art and feel something” is too raw of a line to have come from a jenna marbles video of her painting a rainbow/polka dot seahorse saying “it’s seahorse time” on a denim jacket

Why do you people feel profound thought has to come from high places? The gutter looks at the stars too

not only did you prove your point, but you showed an example of it in the same sentence

Boss is asleep, cannot stop me from frogposting

First like and this has already found its intended audience

uh oh

Tooth fairies are a smaller and friendlier subspecies of the larger and much more hostile bone fairies.

Thank you for this bespoke nightmare

bro forget that how much money do i get for a femur under my pillow

hate when couples say ‘we’re pregnant!!!’ both of you? prove it

his and hers matching pregancies

THIS ISNT ABT ‘cis’ mpreg ITS ABT TRANS MEN BE QUIET

My friend who has a gyno dad tells the best story about a couple (cis woman-trans man) who both tried in vitro fertilization and the guy got pregnant, and they were talking about it in the lobby when a cishet couple started getting weird abt it and said sth about it being "unnatural". Her dad heard and was like, "UNNATURAL? EVERYTHING WE DO HERE IS UNNATURAL, God didn't wanna give you guys a kid as much as he didn't want to give one to this couple! And you all came to me for the same thing! WE ONLY DO UNNATURAL!!! IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT YOU CAN LEAVE!" and to this day I've never respected a doctor more.

Never quit never give-up!

It's really this. And some people (guess who) really hate it.

We have in this equation many, many people who, more than anything else, fear their own deaths... the final and most dreadful loss of control. After they die (and here comes their greatest terror!) the young will remake the world in their own image... there being no (putative) grownups any more to stop them.

So they're presently trying to alter political structures all over the planet in such a way as to prevent the Naughty Youngs from too quickly undoing everything their (theoretically Wise Old) elders have done. They're intent on running your lives by their rules for absolutely as long as possible, even after they're dead.

...Now. There's a lot of "Don't expect the young to save us!" stuff out there, and sometimes I half suspect those other People are behind that too. (Admittedly, it's too easy when you're young and busy to blink your eyes open after a long night out and mutter "Yeah, you made this mess, save yourselves!")

But there's a way in which this is also ridiculous. Because... honestly. They expect a generation (indeed, more than one generation) raised on Luke Skywalker to fall for that?

Pitiful.

There are way too many potential heroes out there. Likely enough you're one. You don't even have to blow up a fully operational battle station to manifest this heroism! Just vote. Or help someone vote. Or more than one someone. Help voters in your community to register. Help defeat obvious attempts to gerrymander voters out of control of their own districts. Do the little things. Enough little things can't be stopped by the forces that assume everybody else to be as lazy and selfish as they are.

You outnumber the fascists. Stand up and act like it. "Snowflakes", they call us? Get enough snowflakes together and you've got an avalanche. Tried standing in front of one of those lately?

Meanwhile, I for one have no problems with saying, loudly, "Save us, O Young! You're our only hope." (Imagine me as a holographic projection if you must.) :)

And for now, I'll be out there doing what one person can.

Please, you do that too!

there’s a bit in pratchett’s going postal where someone accuses the protagonist of indirectly causing 2.338 statistical deaths. recently it’s made me wonder, did pterry ever think about the lives he saved, himself? the people pulled out of the dark by his writing, in the same kind of fractions and possibilities? the people who survived by kindness that was only offered because he made each of us a little bit better?

he saved a piece of my life. without discworld, i would have been a little less likely to have made it this far. we talk about how he’s not really dead while his name’s still spoken, and a lot of the time we reference that same book when we do. but he’s alive in so much more than that. there’s a bit of his voice in every breath i take, because i don’t know for certain i’d be taking it if not for him.

and i think… don’t we all have that power? maybe the world would be a better place if we all understood that one well-placed kindness is all it takes to save a piece of a life.

not a salt or a pepper, but a secret third thing

TL;DR - The third thing was Sugar. Not mustard, not paprika, not dried herbs, not something lost in the mists of time.

It was sugar, and there's historical proof.

*****

ETA: I'd put about 70% of this post together before @dduane said "Have you seen this?"

"This" was from @jesters-armed, in first with my notions about The Fifth Element Third Condiment, and even a mention that the posts were "...a bit long(ish)".

Ahem.

Yes they were, with no change here. You have been warned. :->

Well, okay, there's one change. The pix in this post are new and, combined with the illustrations in older posts, go even further towards confirming that what I once called a theory, I now regard as Fact.

*****

Here are a couple of 19th-century table caddies, proper name "cruet sets". Take a look at the labels. They answer the "what was it?" question asked by that TikTok in a single word.

Sugar.

Not just in English, Spanish too.

Azucar.

Even without labels to tell them apart and even when the containers were of matched size and shape, sugar-casters always had larger holes than pepper-shakers.

Sometimes not much larger, as here...

...but usually, like those below and above, more than big enough to ensure no confusion between sugar and pepper.

A container of similar shape with no holes, as in the set above, held mustard.

Mustard was never a shaker seasoning; it didn't work that way. Its spiciness doesn't activate until the dry "mustard flour" was mixed with water, vinegar, beer or wine and left to stand for several minutes.

This produced a runny-to-stiff paste which was at first transferred from pot to plate on the point of a knife, but soon got its own dedicated spoon.

There's a slot in this mustard-pot's side for a spoon, and the set pictured above may also have such a slot, unfortunately facing away from the camera.

A matched spoon became part of any mustard-pot set...

...and was such a uniform size that "mustard-spoon" was a recipe measurement along with dessert-spoon, tea-spoon, salt-spoon and even cayenne-spoon. (I've posted about cayenne as a table condiment elsewhere).

*****

Where's the salt-shaker in those sets?

When sets like those were in common use, salt-shakers weren't.

*****

So how did people use salt if it wasn't in a shaker?

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance salt was put out in ornate dishes called a Salt which were often spectacular works of art.

This was placed at the top end of the table where important people sat; those seated further down were "below the salt".

Later, and still nowadays in formal settings, salt went into smaller dishes - salt-cellars - which like mustard had their own spoons. These were set on the table between two or four guests.

They took salt with the spoon, and instead of sprinkling it all over, they made a little heap of salt on the side of their plate and added pinches as required with finger and thumb.

*****

The same side-of-plate thing is done with mustard.

English mustard is extremely pungent *, far more so than the Grey Poupon which TikTok Guy slurps so casually off his finger. A little can go a long way, too much can be overpowering, and slathering it over an entire plateful of food can make that food inedible.

(* I'm aware Chinese and Russian mustards are even hotter; they're not relevant here.)

I once had the educational (okay, also entertaining) experience of watching a friend from the USA putting Colman's English on their hot-dog as if it was French's Yellow, then taking a bite. Even then they were lucky, because mustard is hottest when made fresh and the shop-bought from a jar was much weaker than it might have been.

"Made mustard" of the kind which went onto Regency, Victorian and Edwardian tables packs quite a punch, and dishes of that period was far from bland; it took two world wars and their associated rationing to give British food its rep for being dull.

Here's an example of how mustard is used.

Even though it's from a jar and feeble by comparison with fresh-made, it's likely that most of this will remain untouched when the meal is over.

Jeremiah Colman, founder of Britain's best-known mustard company, was only half-joking when he claimed that the firm's excellent sales record, and his own fortune, came from not from mustard eaten but from what was left on plates.

Whether on the plate or on the food, mustard for table use never came out of a shaker.

*****

The TikTok cites Bill Bryson, an American writer who, though living in the UK and presumably familiar with local grocery shops, failed to connect the proper name of the shaker ("caster" - TikTok Guy uses the name himself) with a grade of sugar sold by Irish / UK shops right now.

Here are the three standard grades - coarse, medium and fine. Note what the middle grade is called.

""Caster" has become a single-word description for "fine-grain quick-melting fast-mixing general-purpose cooking-and-baking sugar" but is a literal description both of how it was used ("cast" as a verb) and the container ("caster") it was in.

*****

TikTok Guy mentions the "expense and effort" of using sugar.

Expense:

From the Middle Ages up to the early 1600s sugar was indeed expensive and only for the rich.

Good Queen Bess's teeth were in an appalling state because of her sugar consumption, and less-wealthy people sometimes blackened their (healthy) teeth, to suggest they too could afford enough sugar to cause rich-people tooth decay.

However, increased use of slave labour on sugar plantations meant the end product became more and more affordable, and by the mid-1700s sugar was no longer "a luxurious delicacy". It became a household staple, enough that in 1833 politician William Cobbett ranted about how overindulgence in sugary tea had sapped the vitality of the English working class.

His remedy was home-brewed beer, and lots of it (!)

Effort:

TikTok Guy uses the word as if it's something out of the ordinary, and seems unaware of how much physical labour - from preparing and cooking food to fetching water to washing dishes to tending the fire or range - went on every single day in a pre-modern-gadgets kitchen.

For instance, before electrical ease or hand-cranked convenience, whipping cream to thickness or beating egg-whites stiff enough for meringues meant thrashing away with a bundle of twigs "until it be enough", however long that took.

By comparison, breaking down a sugar-loaf was quick and easy, especially since there was a tool for the purpose called "sugar nips".

There's a set in one of the TikTok photos, though TikTok Guy didn't comment on them. He may not have known what they were.

Once nipped off, sugar chunks were reduced to the required texture with a pestle-and-mortar, exactly as was done with every other crushable ingredient in that period kitchen.

This and everything else wasn't effort in the way TikTok Guy thinks; it was just - especially if a mortar was involved - The Daily Grind.

*****

Conclusion:

I've posted about sugar casters before, and the first time (six years ago) was amusingly cautious:

Since then, backed with increasing amounts of hard visual proof as shown here and elsewhere, I've gone from caution to Certainty.

The "mystery" third container in table cruets was for SUGAR, with enough historical evidence in the form of specifically labelled and shaped containers to confirm it beyond doubt.

*****

And they all sprinkled happily ever after.

The End.

nakedsasquatch it’s ya man

Okay but seriously folks - as often as I joke about this movie stirs my loins and as weirdly popular as this text post got a while back, I wanna rap with you all about why the George of the Jungle remake is a pretty important piece of cinema.

It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!

First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest - Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.

Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t - no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…

…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!

*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*

Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him - his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.

Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”

And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)

One thing to add: in the scene mentioned above where the ladies are watching him in the billowy shirt running with the horses, it pans back to about 50 feet away to two guys in suits at this party looking at the women and one of the guys says, “Man, what is it with women and horses?” So not only does this movie highlight the female gaze, but it blatantly points out that western male sensibilities don’t have a clue what actually appeals to women.

ALSO

he’s non threatening

as mentioned above, he looks built for dexterity rather than power, but he’s still a 6+ foot tall extremely muscular man, and not once are you worried for Ursula when he’s with her

ALSO

let’s take a look at his rival - Lyle is a cravat-wearing trust-fund kid (who, interestingly, is into Ursula’s fortune more than her, which kind of makes this a gender-swapped gold-digger thing too). He’s blonde and Ursula’s mom LOVES him. He’s more uncomfortable and less prepared to cope with the jungle than Ursula is, in his pastels and shiny shoes.

But he talks over Ursula, insists he knows what’s best for her, ignores her autonomy. In spite of the fact that Lyle Van de Groot is a rich, educated, social climber who cares deeply about his clothing and appearances he is a point-by-point checklist of unhealthy masculinity in a way that beefy, inarticulate, uneducated George could never be. Ursula is off on her own doing her own thing and Lyle hires two FUCKING POACHERS to track her down in the middle of the jungle while she’s working (or on vacation? It’s never made clear because he interrupts her before she can explain why she went on the expedition). Lyle ignores the local guides, claiming his experience with a bridge in Maui means the bridge they’re on is safe - which leads to a significant injury for one of the guides. He then tells Ursula the guides are conspiring against him, trying to make himself and his poachers seem safe and the Africans who make up the rest of their party seem dangerous.

Check that body language! A post above points out that we’re never worried about Ursula when she’s around George. That’s because Lyle talks to her like this. Look at his aggressive lean! Look at him literally looking down at her! She’s tilted away from him in the least threatening position possible and he’s so aggressive about whatever point he’s making. When he finds her after he pushed her toward a damned lion he kisses her and she pushes him away. Want a textbook example of gaslighting? Here you go: she says “don’t get all smoochy with me! I remember what happened with that lion” and he responds “What are you talking about? I was fighting that lion the whole time - you were just so terrified you don’t remember.”  Then he shoots George! And then he kidnaps Ursula and attempts to force her into marriage!

Now look at how George and Ursula interact (slightly NSFW):

Even though he’s a big strong dude and he thinks he’s doing what’s okay he lets her set the tone for their interactions. He accepts that he’s out of his wheelhouse and even if he doesn’t understand it he does what she says is culturally appropriate. He learns from her! He listens to her! Compare Lyle leaning into Ursula above to this image of George and Ursula talking:

He’s listening to her, all of his attention is on on her, but he’s totally nonthreatening. His torso is turned toward her but he’s not invading her space, his hands are clasped, he’s smiling, and she’s the one leaning into him. Look at that smile she has, look how happy she is to be listened to. Her posture in both images is vulnerable but in this one with George she’s vulnerable because she has chosen to share with him instead of because she feels threatened.

When George rescues Ursula from Lyle at the end of the film it isn’t a typical damsel situation - George doesn’t have a knock-down-drag-out fight with Lyle, he swings into a tree and offers Ursula a hand so she can reach up and save herself (and before he does it he acknowledges how much it’s going to hurt and *whimpers* and looks human and scared). And you’ve gotta remember that George rescues everybody. It’s not just Ursula - he also rescues a parasailer and gets shot rescuing Shep and Ape. He just likes helping, dammit!

AND this movie offers a perfect counter to the “nice guy” thing - Ursula starts engaged to a jerk who her mom thinks is a “nice guy” the moves on to actual nice man George who isn’t *just* nice - he’s also patient, listens to her, has his own skills and talents, is okay with being goofy, has his own social circle and isn’t totally dependent on Ursula, and looks amazing. Ursula doesn’t go with George just because he’s a *nice* guy who rescued her from an asshole, Ursula goes with George because he’s an interesting, fun person who is supportive of her different way of being an interesting, fun person. AND he’s emotionally available. Google image search George of the jungle and see how many smiles you can find, see how many open looks of confusion there are, see how much sadness you can see in George’s face. Now look for images of Lyle. His two expressions are a smirk and cartoonish fear. I know this is a cartoonish kid’s movie, but it is SO powerful that the hero shares his emotions while the villain masks every emotion but fear. Lyle doesn’t want to open up, he doesn’t want to be vulnerable, he wants CONTROL. George wants to learn, to protect people he cares about, to explore new places, to laugh when he’s happy and to be sad when he’s sad, and that he does that while being a broad-shouldered, physically powerful dude who is NOT totally self-involved is just…

Like, look, I didn’t sign on to tumblr dot com for George of the Jungle discourse, but I’m just now realizing that this movie may have done the most for destroying my conception of stoic masculinity and gender roles as a child.

Like

Damn.

2nd reblog because this is even better. 

George of the Jungle discourse is definitely what I signed up to this hellsite for me thinks

It’s been seven years and this post is still one of my all time favorites.

Wish I could do a lit unit on this movie…

It’s been seven years

and this post is still one of

my all time favorites.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Gravity legally cannot hurt you if you scream "NO GODS NO MASTERS" immediately before impact

I'm so fucking tired of this bicycle helmet discourse. Bike helmets aren't going to do shit to protect you if you get hit by a car

Most of the time... Bike accidents.... Involve things.... Other than cars...... like the ground....also it's safety gear..... Wearing it is non negotiable.... You are one accident away from being permanently disabled..... You need to protect your brain

Not towards OP

Is OSHA and other safety regulations also cop behavior?

*sigh* The belief that OSHA and other safety regulations are cop behavior are common opinions that people have, anarchist or not. Wearing PPE is annoying and often uncomfortable, sweaty, and cumbersome. People also generally hate being told to be careful, because they believe that "be careful" is synonymous with "hey, you're too stupid to do that without hurting yourself".

But all it takes is one time for you to slip up and suddenly the grinder disk that would have gotten stuck in your safety glasses is in your eye, or you're getting treated for lung cancer because you didn't want to wear your respirator while you welded. These are decisions that you were free to make, but might seriously regret later on.

People will scream until they're blue in the face about how oppressive it is to have to wear a safety vest and hard hat on a construction site, but do you really think that the hammer that slipped out of your buddy's hand is going to take that into consideration when it collides with your skull?

No political theory will save you from an accident. You can either wear your PPE, or can die, unexpectedly, painfully, and slowly. The choice is yours. Go argue with a lathe if you feel so strongly about it.

pill bug on your dashboard!!!!!!!!!

They’re also shooting for 100% renewable plastic sources by 2030! All of the soft plant/leaf elements in sets right now and going forward are made out of bioplastic made from sugarcane, and they’re working on getting the regular hard plastic bricks out of that, too.

They’ve done it, actually! The full bricks are in the prototype stage now, and are expected to be 100% biodegradable without the need for a commercial compost facility. It’s very cool. Right now they’re testing the durability and playability of the bricks and seeing what needs to be revised/reworked on their final model.

So its that easy huh

Of course it is

Actually, this isn’t “easy” and is huge news. You see, Lego is absolutely meticulous about their quality control. Their standards for manufacturing are stupidly high, as are their safety requirements. You know that distinctive “click” when you pop two Lego bricks apart? They engineered that. That sound is so distinctive that it can be used to tell genuine Lego bricks from counterfeits and it’s a sound that would be based on shape and material.

Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)

Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).

What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….

Nobody else has any excuse.

GLORIOUS NERDERY Lego edition

I'm starting to get smile lines.

How lovely to have smiled so often that happiness permanently etches itself into your face

How metal to have lived a life where your face now pre-warns people not to fuck with you

How resilient to have cared so strongly that empathy is now visibly displayed on your face

Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th

No guys you don’t understand.

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing

This is humanity

Happy Birthday, Curiousity.

Happy birthday, Curiosity.

chinese mantou (steamd bread) be like

the oranges holy shit