i think you should be able to live without a phone i think phones should never be required or expected or assumed i think when things require you to scan a qr code or something thats the devil and hes corrupting every strata of society
David Bowie Performing Live on The Today Show, Rockefeller Plaza, NYC
- “Reality” Summer Concert Series, September 18, 2023
This scene gave with both hands. TED LASSO 3.06 - Sunflowers
Due South Re-Watch || 3x02
the white suit tho
Great thought, but for those unaware, Kate Mulgrew’s gorgeous tux from The Killing Game was 100% a reference to Dietrich’s suit in Blonde Venus (1932) with Cary Grant, a pre-Code film directed by Josef von Sternberg. It’s hard to tell in Killing Game, but Mulgrew’s lapels are also sequined. So is the stripe in the trousers. It is basically a replica of Dietrich’s suit, no question.
Okay, so I have a PhD in queer fashion and media. So this is something I happen to know a lot about. So let me explain a few things.
For starters, You cannot get a more explicitly queer-coded woman than Marlene Dietrich.
Cary Grant (another closeted Queer in Hollywood) is also in Blonde Venus, and although their chemistry is great, their romance is unbelievable because it’s very clear that they are both absolutely queer. Hattie McDaniel appears in this film, another Queer in Hollywood (and the first Black person ever to win an Oscar). In both Blonde Venus and Morocco (1930), Dietrich flirts with both men and women. Dietrich was considered a Drag King in her day. She famously proclaimed, ‘I am a gentleman at heart.’
Dietrich often refused to wear trousers, and openly declared that she had plenty of women lovers. She is an iconic staple for queer sexuality even today. She famously kissed a woman in Morocco whilst wearing a tuxedo- with an audience watching and cheering. She then kisses a man, the audience applauds, and she exits. This scene (below) was added at Dietrich’s own behest. The scene was extremely controversial, and they had to defend it against the censors for months.
This very scene is one of the many reasons The Hays Code was enacted (rules from a super-Catholic man who bribed his way into Hollywood and forced the religious ideologies onto the screen), and this scene was one that The Hays Code often pointed to as ‘immoral’ and ‘perverted’ and ‘sexually explicit.’ You can thank the Hays Code for the split beds Lucy and Ricky had, for rules that a kiss must not last longer than a certain amount of time, that, absolutely, NO queer ANYTHING could be acknowledged to exist. Everything had to be subtext, and that’s why so many old black and white films feel really queer.
But Dietrich openly proclaimed herself queer, dressed in men’s clothing, kissed women on screen- and became a Queer icon not just in fashion, but in sexuality, decadence, and identity. The so-called famous ’Dietrich’s Sewing Circle’ (of which Hattie McDaniel was a member) was essentially every Queer woman in Hollywood who all had affairs with each other. Books have been written on this. Here’s a brief article about one of those books that goes through some of the basics.
Okay, Queer Fashion Film Academic, what’s your point?
The point is that by wearing a duplicate of a Dietrich suit- one where she openly flirted with women, no less–Janeway is 100% coded as queer in The Killing Game.
Especially with that tuxedo scene and the way she’s talking to Seven. In fact, most of the scenes in those episodes where she is talking to Seven, you will notice that Mulgrew plays Janeway with a bite- her eyes linger on Seven just a bit longer, her body language is just a bit more open and fierce than usual.
Even in Paris, for a woman to wear what Mulgrew/Janeway is clearly coding herself as a Queer person through that specific outfit. She is wearing a giant billboard that says I AM QUEER.
By putting Kate Mulgrew in a replica of a Dietrich 1940s tuxedo, Janeway is visually coded as queer through replication and imitation of one of the most Queer icons in cinematic history. That suit is too famous, too iconic, too specifically loaded with subtext and text of queerness through Dietrich.
I am convinced that the costume department 100% knew what they were doing, and part of me wonders if Kate Mulgrew herself had pushed for that suit. Why? Because Kate Mulgrew herself was the one who pushed for Janeway to have a same-sex relationship.
Watch Blonde Venus. Watch Morocco. Then, watch Kate Mulgrew in The Killing Game. She imitates Dietrich’s body-language, her mannerisms, the smirk, in that opening scene. There is no question- Janeway has been possessed by Dietrich’s characters.
Funnily enough, for the rest of those two episodes, Kate Mulgrew is also very clearly imitating another Queer woman through her voice intonation and mannerisms, general fashion and hairstyles: Katharine Hepburn.
Because of her absurd visual and voice similarity to Katharine Hepburn (another Queer in Dietrich’s sewing circle), Mulgrew once played Hepburn in Tea at Five.
Like Dietrich (bisexual), Hepburn was very clearly Queer coded, as she was a lesbian. She was also famous in Hollywood for her male-coded attire, though she preferred regular suits to Dietrich’s tuxedos.
She, like Dietrich, had the same problem whenever they teamed up with Cary Grant- watch Philadelphia Story and tell me that the real ending of that movie is not Hepburn’s character, Grant’s character and Stewart’s character all ending up in a thruple together. The movie makes no sense if that’s not the real ending.
Hepburn wore trousers on film sets and this upset the studio so much they literally stole her trousers, trying to force her into a skirt. Hepburn just walked around in her knickers, refusing to wear the skirt. Eventually, the studio gave her back the trousers.
Okay, I’m going off tangent. Here’s your takeaway:
Kate Mulgrew, (because she’s an absurdly amazing talent), is very heavily is influenced in mannerism, voice, accent and appearance by two of the most Queer-Coded women in cinematic history in The Killing Game. Through fashion and performance, she embodies Dietrich’s Blonde Venus and Morocco characters, and through appearance, voice and body language, she gives that image an additional layer of of Hepburn’s fierce, Queer persona.
Conclusion: Arguably throughout all of Voyager, but specifically In The Killing Game, Kathryn Janeway is visibly Queer.
By the way, although she never got credit for it, the person who wrote Blonde Venus was Dietrich herself. Both she and von Sternberg were suspended for several months because the movie was considered too salacious by the Hays code, and it caused production problems for over a year.
The BFI has a great write-up on Dietrich’s queerness and fashion, you can read it here: https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/my-best-girlfriend-queer-dietrich-screen
That white suit means so much more than you thought.
That last panel looks so peaceful. Sure they’re tired, but they’re genuinely enjoying themselves. Props to the artist for being able to convey such an interesting expression.
Source: instagram.com
You know, I have been seeing ‟Those hormone-addled Spike fangirls, amrite, hur hur, you only like Spike because you want to fuck him!‟ posts for over twenty years now, and I‛m getting just a teeny bit tired of it. And I could write a big ol' meta post about how no, I am a lesbian and I don't want to fuck Spike, or James Marsters, and I find Spike fascinating because in many ways I identify with his struggle – the whole bit about a creature without a soul trying to grapple with 'how can I be good?' hits narrative kink buttons I've had all my life, not to mention that characters which challenge the boundaries of their fictional universe – really challenge them, and force both creator and audience to think about those limits, what they are, why they exist, SHOULD they exist? – are just *chef's kiss* and combine that with Buffy's conflict between her duty as a Slayer and her personal life which hits ANOTHER set of narrative kink buttons, and how characters which blah blah blah far into the night, but I've done that at least six times before on as many different platforms, and we are STILL in the Year of Our Lord 2023 getting posts which boil down to "You only like Spike because you want to fuck him lol!" so ya know what?
WHO THE FUCK CARES? Maybe some Spike fans do want to fuck him. Many of the Xander fans I've known either A) want to fuck him, or B) identify with him and want him to fuck the characters they think are hot/important. Many fans of every single other character do the same! This is American television, pretty much everyone on it is gorgeous by normal person standards, and unless you're ace you probably notice this fact and think "Hmm, wouldn't toss them out of bed for eating crackers," about half the characters of your preferred sex(es). THAT DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY INVALIDATE EVERY OTHER THOUGHT YOU HAVE ABOUT A CHARACTER.
CAN WE JUST TAKE 'THE CHARACTERS ON THIS SHOW ARE PHYSICALLY ATTRACTIVE' AS GIVEN AND MOVE ON?? CAN WE? THANK YOU!!!!
hank0331
I’ll repost this whenever I see it on my dashboard.
fuck…
So, one thing you can do is use Firefox instead of Chrome. Another thing you can do is use duck duck go instead of google search. In fact you know what let me get on desktop and make a proper reply, give me about an hour and I’ll hook y’all up with some privacy
ok I took a bit more than an hour, I have time blindness don’t @ me.
Step one, download and install Firefox.
It will ask if you want to import all your bookmarks and saved passwords from your current browser/s. Do that. It will also ask if you want to make it your default browser. Do that too.
You will be given the option to create an account, but it’s not mandatory. It’s just a convenience service if you want to access your bookmarks and saved passwords on different devices.
Firefox has a load of built-in privacy protections but we’re going to install some addons to make it EVEN BETTER. Don’t worry they’re all free and once you’ve installed them you don’t have to think about them again.
First, Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials. Firefox does still set your default search engine to Google, we don’t want that. You could manually change it but the Duck Duck Go addon gives you some tracker blocking, encryption, private searching, all set up and ready to go
Next you need an ad blocker. ABP went stupid, so here’s uBlock
Do you use farcebook or any related product like instagram? Facebook Container automatically puts those in a little quarantine pen so they can’t follow you around and spy on what else you’re doing
If you have multiple accounts (eg. work/school, family, public, personal, private) you can use Firefox Multi-Account Containers to manage them and keep their footprints separate
Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere are published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and those people are serious as a heart attack when it comes to online privacy.
Privacy Badger sends a do not track signal, and also breaks link tracking by sites like facebook, twitter, etc.
HTTPS Everywhere is… ok there’s a lot to explain here, and we’re already longposting so just, every time you connect to any page it makes it more secure.
If you want to learn a bit about how this works and why it’s good to have, might as well start with the HTTPS page on wikipedia
You could stop here, that’s pretty good. But you can do more. You could install NoScript. A big warning with this one, it can break half the internet. It’s a LOT more user friendly than it used to be but if you can’t figure shit out by fucking around you should probably skip it. It blocks scripts from running without permission, protecting you from drive-by scripts that give your computer herpes, but also sometimes protecting you from script-heavy sites working at all.
Lastly an honourable mention for Ghostery. Ghostery has been a solid privacy addon for years, and now has adblocking powers. Honestly I haven’t used it in ages, a long time ago it conflicted with something else I deemed more important so I removed it and I never got around to picking it back up, but it has a great reputation and is trusted by a lot of people who I trust.
Now, this all only covers your browser activity, which is a lot but you will still need to manually adjust privacy settings on your google/gmail/youtube account/s if you have any, your facebook/instagram account/s if you have any, and your actual gotdamn operating system if you use windows. I know it seems like a lot of effort, I’m a lazy bitch too, but it’s very set-and-forget, you only need to do it once, and then just review it a couple of times a year.
Here’s some stuff about Windows 10 privacy settings
And some stuff about google privacy settings
And some stuff about facebook privacy settings
And here’s an honest explanation of what a VPN really does and does not do, why you don’t actually need one, and the few real reasons you might ever want one
And a bit about password managers
This is by no means the limit of the steps you can take to secure your online privacy, if you want to go deeper you definitely can. But if you don’t want to or don’t have the time or aren’t very technically minded, this will still put you way ahead of the pack. It won’t make you The Most Private but it will make you Much More Private Than Most, and it should take you less than an hour or two, depending on how many accounts you have on predatory datenkraken sites.
Now go hide your panties from the evil empire.
i will add that ublock’s ‘cosmetic filtering’ (the little eye on their icon menu) is on by default & can donk up small but seemingly unconnected things, and you can turn it off with no real problem I’ve found yet
I will add that making these changes does more than improve your online privacy. I had several computers get absolutely wrecked by walware when I was younger, but the second I started using NoScript, that issue completely stopped. This was about ten years ago. There are two caveats: you need to develop a good sense of which domains to allow scripts from, and any content creators you like won’t get any ad revenue from you, so it would be nice if you could support them in other ways like Patreon.
The 2ND picture tho 😭😭😭 (Via: IG/yarinklein_wild_photography)
How to build a sturdy bridge out of 9 beams using ancient methods
A full picture of the painting mentioned (Along the River During the Qingming Festival/清明上河图) can be found here, but I've inserted the section with the bridge under the cut
[eng by me]
Another lovely Terry Pratchett easter egg - a stand full of Terry’s books ❤.
Bts pic::
Neil Gaiman in the interactive 360° Aziraphale’s Bookshop video: We have all sorts of books. Aziraphale has been buying them and failing to sale them for ages. But he does have a particular display here of Terry Pratchett books. He’s very fond of books by Terry Pratchett.
David Bowie Performing Time Will Crawl
- Top Of The Pops June 18,1987
STAR TREK: PICARD (2020–2023) - 3.09 • “Võx”
Stop tagging your non-explicit AO3 fic ace-friendly.
Saw a fanfic summary in the Sandman tag that pissed me off.
At least half the explicit fic on ao3 is written by asexuals
Fictional written porn is not real life sex. Whether or not you like reading/writing fictional written porn has no bearing on whether or not you experience real life sexual attraction.
Liking zombie apocalypse movies does not mean you want a zombie apocalypse to happen in real life.
Fiction is not reality.
Equating asexuality with sex negativity is, however, acephobic.
The tag “ace friendly” fic is too close to kid friendly to not be infantilizing, and assumes there’s only one kind of ace, but we’re not a monolith. We have micro labels galore specifically because we’re not a monolith and have varied opinions especially about sex and explicit content.
We have a tag/rating for non explicit it’s called gen or general audiences. If you’re looking, there it is.
Standard ao3 tagging etiquette is plenty good enough. If I’m not interested in taking my ace self to the explicit works I won’t. If I am having a normal one and traipsing around the explicit tags I’m still fine, worst case scenario -click the back button. Like everyone else. The aces must be protected from smut/kink/reality that other people bang group is a vocal minority with a volume bump from the right. Not actually representative of most ace people.
Speaking as a person who falls under one of those micro labels on the ace spectrum (and it IS a spectrum, not a single point), I actively enjoy reading fics rated Mature due to sex, and even fics rated Explicit.
i kept reading 'ace friendly' as meaning 'avoids the othering sensations created by amatonormativity' and getting burned by fic that absolutely did not do this
If we start from the assumption that neurotypicals are “normal,” and autistics are “disordered,” then poor connections between neurotypicals and autistics inevitably get blamed on some “defect” or “deficit” in autistics. If an autistic person can’t understand a neurotypical, it’s because autistics have empathy deficits and impaired communication skills; if a neurotypical can’t understand an autistic person, it’s because autistics have empathy deficits and poor communication skills. All the frictions and failures of connection between the two groups, and all the difficulties autistics run into in neurotypical society, all get blamed on autism. But when our vision is no longer clouded by the illusion of “normal,” we can recognize this double standard for what it is, recognize it as just another manifestation of the sort of privilege and power that dominant majorities so often wield over minorities of any sort.
— Nick Walker, "Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities"