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Soy una limpiaparabrisa

@strangetikigod

He/him cis dude, NorCal transplant, tech industry geek w/a theatre background. I may or may not be Paul Giamatti. (Spoiler alert: I am not)🥖🌹

Heck yes Tonys halted due to WGA strike

Heck yes Stranger Things halted due to WGA strike

Heck yes no new Last Week Tonight due to WGA strike

IMPACTFUL THINGS AND THINGS I LIKE BEING HALTED DUE TO WGA STRIKE IS GOOD

PAY DEM WRITERS! BOOYAH!

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yesterday i was hiking with my dog and passed by a family with their 14 yo princess of darkness trotting behind them in very unsuitable clothes and uncomfortable shoes that clearly weren't meant to get dirty on forest mud. oh the quintessential teenage experience of doing something in a way that is stupid and sucks because it's important that it's your own way 🫡

The experience of being a teenager, especially, is relentlessly being forced to do things by authority figures who have arbitrary power over you. As a result "Okay, I'll do it, but I'll do it in the least compliant way possible" is a persistent and entirely sympathetic element of being a teenager

Okay as someone who professionally works with kids, I'll weigh on on this and say: the thing about defiance and "brattiness" is they are defense mechanisms for having no power in your life.

Kids and teens do not have power in their life. Even in the most ideal of circumstances. They can't really make informed choices about voting or houses and especially in America, the entire social structure is hostile to letting them go where they want to go.

So OP is absolutely right and put it beautifully. "it's important that it's your own way." I've seen preverbal babies force their shoes off their feet in response to a completely unrelated obligation because I can force them to take a nap but I can't make them take a nap AND nicely keep their shoes on. It is arguably a pretty stupid defiance, but defiance isn't about being smart.

It's the scream of a person without power insisting if they have no choice but to do this, they will do it their way! And that's more important than practicality. It's more important than being reasonable.

I firmly believe that deep down adults aren't less bratty or defiant than kids are- they're just given more leeway and power so they're more used to having control and use that to cope. The average 30-year-old would absolutely have a meltdown in the pasta aisle if they were regularly dragged to places they didn't want to be by another adult who they were never allowed to be away from or choose where they were going besides very limited exceptions.

(also disclaimer that in using the term "bratty" I am by no means condemning this behavior. It's born of a frustration that is completely understandable.)

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I really love when adam gets asked questions about lgbt discourse in the media because his response is almost always some snarky version of "respectfully none of these are issues that actually matter to any of us"

recalling that one time piers morgan (boo) tried to bait him into the whole gay actors playing gay characters argument and adam was like "yeah i see both sides. would love to see more roles for gay people though"

he really has the self assured energy of a gay person who has been put through the media circus in the early 2000s and really has no time for it anymore

BITCH

NOT TO MENTION the fact that the prohibition against direct images in Islam was actually the reason for the development of the incredible advances in higher mathematics of the Islamic Golden Age because they were required to create these structures. The Islamic World basically took the ban on images as a “hold my beer” thing and created an entire artistic culture based on mathematics and architecture where art and science fed into and glorified each other, 700 years before the Italian Renaissance.

In conclusion

i will say that islamic art drove me nuts as a kid because i did not have the math knowledge or capability to create such geometric patterns. it may have been the art of my people but by gOD it was difficult and unnecessarily difficult. however my pride in islamic art is neverending. it was frowned upon to be vain in the house, so artists would deck out the places of worship - but places of worship couldn’t be too garishly decorated, or it might detract from worship! the compromise? calm blues and greens, intricate details hidden into the complex patterns. carefully mapped out and planned patterns that were beyond complex and straight into deliberately confusing and practically impossible to replicate. not only that, but verses from the Quran were hidden along the walls, asking god for blessings and care.

muslim art is stunning and i’ll fight the bitch that says otherwise.

Also something underappreciated about the Islamic art is that not only is it geometrically incredible, but the geometry and structure of it has a purpose. In the niches and ceilings, the cascading ornamentation is used for acoustic purposes. In many of the mosques, they are so well laid out and designed that a single person standing on a specific spot can speak/sing/pray and be heard in every single part of the building.

I feel like this should be considered under the same heading as “fascists don’t like abstract art.”

Like, that’s a whole thing. If you look at the art favored by dictators and fascists, it’s almost entirely portraits and landscapes. (Nice, serene, pastoral landscapes, though. None of that war-torn realism stuff.) Rarely still-lifes, unless there’s also a person in the picture. It’s literally common enough to be considered a phenomenon. And while Islamic art isn’t abstract in the sense we usually use the word, it certainly does not include portraits or serene pastoral landscapes. Just, you know. Considering who said this. Something to consider.

I think somewhere people got confused and now think that "privileged" equals "oppressor" and "having privilege" equals "has the power to oppress".

It doesn't.

Would love to hear more about this, because I understand the first part, that privileged doesn’t automatically equal oppressor, but I don’t think I know enough to understand how having privilege doesn’t equal having the power to oppress.

Having privilege does not automatically grant you power.

I have working legs. This does not mean I am systemically oppressing people who need mobility aids, and it doesn't mean I have the power to do it, either. If I got elected to government and passed legislation that removed elevators and ramps on the basis of "Well I don't need them", then I'd be systemically oppressing people based on walking privilege.

It's exactly what I was saying on the other post; existing doesn't mean oppression.

You do not have mobility problems with your legs at the time of this posting. I do, but I can still walk with relatively little assistance as long as my pain is low and the terrain is not actively working against me. That doesn't mean the stairs in your house or apartment are oppressing me, or that your ability to climb them with no negative effects is oppressing me. You have the privilege of not needing to worry if you can actually make that climb and thus more avenues are open to you- you don't have to worry about the expense of buying a house with no stairs, you don't secondguess if you can actually take the flight, entire venues and employment/schooling oppurtunies and city streets and businesses aren't completely inaccessible to you because they exist on the third floor with no fucking elevator, you don't suffer sleepless at night when you were forced to take stairs you shouldn't have climbed. But unless *you*, specifically YOU, designed these stairways in these places with no other way to access the upper floors... it's not like you not needing to worry about that is directly oppressing me.

You CAN contribute to it- "why should stairs need to be accessible" "who even needs ramps and elevators" "I mean if you can walk you should be able to take a couple steps" "why do I need to make room for you on the elevator or wait for you to catch up" and my favorite "wow the world's youngest senior citizen" usually said when walking with my cane. But until that line is crossed, you existing as someone who can walk without pain unassisted is not directly oppressing me.

And that's the thing. Actions are oppression. Existing as someone with privilege does not mean you automatically oppress people.

"Having privilege" is morally neutral. Society is what bestows you privilege. That is completely out of your control.

"Oppression" is morally repugnant. Actions that contribute to the harm of others are terrible and bad and you should not do them.

Too many people conflate the two.

Honestly, in my work as a therapist, I’m seeing this A Lot, and tbh I still don’t have a satisfactory approach to it. A heavy dose of Existentialist “create your own Purpose” tempered with “when the plane’s going down, put your own oxygen mask on first”, but… yeah, there is no ethical way to work on individual emotional distress without acknowledging the systemic socioeconomic, geopolitical fuckery going on at the moment, and the sheer grief that comes with it.

I’m a guidance counselor/psychologist for teenagers and it’s getting really hard to motivate young people to work for a future they don’t believe in. 

 They look at ther future and see global warming, wwIII, unemployement, political unstability, poison in everything  they eat, the earth and animals dying all around them. 

I saw this video where someone was asking french teens in the 50s how they imagine the future would be. The war hadn’t been over for long and yet it was all positive with like peace and flying cars and such. Then they went and ask the same questions to nowadays teens and hell that was depressing. Some still had hope, but it was just that “well I hope I’ll have a nice house and maybe some kid” but there was such a hesitancy to it, like they didn’t dare to hope too much. 

People mock Greta Thunberg but what they don’t get is that when she said “you stole my dreams”, it was the truth. 

Young people don’t get to dream like they used to. They don’t dream anymore, they grief all that won’t be anymore and that’s just so fucking sad. 

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The fact that both the tweet and these reblogs are pre-pandemic makes this post even worse

I love that Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas and the hobbits start all insulting each other on sight and Theoden literally says "It cannot be doubted that we witness the meeting of dear friends." Theoden Gets It

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PLEASE PROVIDE THE SCENE I DONT KNOW THE BOOKS NEARLY WELL ENOUGH TO APPRECIATE THIS PROPERLY

@theriu SURE!!!

This is after the fall of Isengard, when the Fellowship and some men of Rohan reencounter Merry and Pippin after their capture.

"He" refers to Merry

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reuters on zunzi.

(source: reuters | 15 may 2023)

"Apart from news reports, cartoons are used to record some of society's moods, or some very layman ideas, those of ordinary people, and to question and challenge," Wong Kei-kwan, 67, told Reuters on Monday.

"I think this is what should be done in a healthy society," said the cartoonist whose satirical drawings have garnered a huge following in the Chinese-ruled city since 1983.

Wong's work addressed China's tightening grip on freedoms in Hong Kong, including a national security law that has been used to arrest scores of Hong Kong activists and shut down civil society groups and liberal media outlets.

Wong also took on human rights in China and the major democracy movements in 2014 and 2019 in Hong Kong, a bustling port and financial hub that returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise its freedoms would be safe.

Ming Pao decided to axe the strip following six official complaints, including from Hong Kong's security chief, though he gave no official reason for doing so.

Hong Kong leader John Lee said last week that while Hong Kong legally enshrines press freedoms, the government is also obliged to oppose false and biased messages.

Is this about Seattle’s recruitment dropping almost to 0 after the implementation of the living wage? Does anybody have a link?

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YES! it is!

"Since the Army is not subject to local minimum wage laws, Seattle pay now outstrips what locals could earn by signing up for the Army. $15 per hour is not only more than the base pay for privates, but corporals and specialists as well."

Fuck this article for trying to make me sympathize with the military complex tho. Boo-hoo, Sargent Bootlicker won't get Friday off for failing to sign up new recruits

Hmm, it’s almost like the US military pays more than minimum wage in order to recruit people or something

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It’s almost like the US military actively campaigns against attempts to raise minimum wage so that they can still prey on low-income teenagers, too.

I almost joined the Marines so I could pay for college. I recognize how LUCKY I am that I had other options... SO MANY of my peers did not. So many folks get scooped into the military for sheer economic reasons. It is predatory.

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Okay but this is serious, I work in retail and I had a lady come up and ask for 2 $500 Google play gift cards. We have been trained to look for these scams and to warn the customers NEVER give the card numbers over the phone unless you have met this person face to face. I told the lady this and she started crying, saying they were the IRS and that if she hung up they would call the police and have her arrested. They wanted to keep her on the phone so she couldn't call her husband, who was more aware of how the IRS works. I was able to convince her to hang up and call the police on *them* instead, and saved her $500.

Scams are serious, people lose a lot of money and older people are targeted the worst because they're easy targets.

First of all, the IRS will *never* call you and ask for money, and they definitely won't call the cops on you. They'll get your money if they really want it through taxes.

But now they're trying to target our generation using crypto, which is super hard to trace if the money gets lost. So they're getting smarter, and they'll use whatever they can to get you to give them money.

What you really need to know or take away from this is: NEVER, and I mean EVER, buy a gift card and give the barcode number on the back to someone over the phone. It is ALWAYS, 100%, a scam!

Please be safe and hang up on these fuckers the second they ask you to buy a gift card.

Also young people are not exempt. I know someone who in his 20s fell for one of these scams and lost his food money. It was his first year doing taxes since being disowned, so he was already in a mindset where he was nervous about potentially having messed up on his taxes, so when the scammer called, he was already in a position to be manipulated. Scammers and con artist have this trick where they know emotional people are easier to manipulate because they think less clearly. So the first step is to pick an emotion and elevate it. Most phone scammers pick fear, because it’s easy to trigger and makes people the most irrational, but some scams go for other emotions, like pride or lust or grief. And once you manipulate someone’s emotions, you can manipulate them like putty. Scammers will also make sure there’s an urgency to prevent you from slowing down and thinking things through, and make sure you stay on the phone so they can control your pace and continue manipulating you. Pretty much the only think that can stop you from doing their bidding at that point is another person stepping in (another reason they keep you on the phone!)

So yeah maybe let’s not pick on victims of emotional manipulation? Especially those in vulnerable situations who may have just lost their food money?