According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.
sheds a single tear
every august 18th my notifications break and i go, fuck, tumblr has failed me once again, but it hasn’t. it hasn’t failed me. it’s just the taking the hobbits to isengard-iversary. happy 12 years
hey, can we talk for a second? it’s about your girlfriend. yeah, she’s great. no, yeah, I agree. It’s just that… she seems really devoted to you? Like really devoted. Almost as if you were the sole, fragile line mooring her to the shores of humanity. No, that’s not romant—ugh. Listen. Me and the girls, we’re worried you might be the last good thing to happen to her and that were some tragedy to inevitably befall you, she would tear the gods from their thrones and dye the infinite western seas wine-dark with their ichor. Do you think you could introduce her to a new hobby or something? we don’t want to have to argue over what color “wine-dark” is supposed to be
The United States is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Generally speaking, American children’s rights are adequately protected, but considerable problems still exist regarding health care, child abuse, juvenile law, etc.
Who opposes the Convention in the U.S.? The same people shrieking most loudly about abortion: conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians.
The Right to Health More than 8 million children in the United States have no health insurance, meaning about one in ten children. Thousands of others are underinsured, which impedes their right to quality health care services. Statistics show that these children are ten times less likely to receive treatment for conditions such as diabetes, asthma, oral diseases, and obesity. Children of ethic minorities (African-Americans or Hispanics) are more at risk than others : almost a quarter of them are not vaccinated against the most common serious illnesses.
...
Child Labour Although child labour laws have been well enforced in the US, thousands of children, especially Hispanics, work in arduous agricultural environments. They work 14 hours a day during the harvest season, and usually end up abandoning their studies. They are also exposed to pesticides and other agrochemical treatments, which can cause serious health problems.
More at the link.
One of the interchangeable ghouls running in 2024 is talking up his plan to tie voting rights to passing a civics test & it's amazing watching people discuss this in neutral terms
A lot of the response to this is "oh, that's great, next let's restore civics education in schools", but the entire point is that they're not going to improve civics education. The age range gives a hint: this is a ploy to disenfranchise young voters, by, presumably, demanding they pass a test the state won't train them for in order to get rights granted by the states. It's like saying "oh, yes, literacy tests for voting makes sense, it'll really inspire the South to educate black people". It uh. Didn't. And I think many of the people agreeing know that and support it bc it's disenfranchising, but some seem to just agree bc it's "COMMON SENSE" and they're not digging any deeper?
This would be a civics test authored by a far right administration, to be clear. The tests we give immigrants are already propagandistic nonsense, imagine that in the hands of the "slavery taught people valuable skills" crowd
Also, his amendment would allow young people who can't pass the test to vote if they join the military. This is a "service guarantees citizenship" amendment
This is just literacy tests again!
One thing that gets overlooked in conversations about these kinds of tests is that the government isn't required to design a good test. That might seem like a small thing, but during the days of the literacy test governments would go out of their way to write up ambiguous or deceptively worded questions to drive down the pass rate.
Here's a literacy test that was used in Louisiana in 1964. I want you to seriously try taking this test, and remember that you have to answer every question correctly in 10 minutes to vote.
Number 30 is the most egregious to my mind. Draw five circles that do what with one common inter-locking part? What's an interlocking part anyhow? Some of these have multiple possible answers. Is the answer to number 25 "Paris in the the spring" or "what you read in the triangle below"? Number 9 is a particular bit of fuckery, because the right answer is to draw a single curved line that intersects Z and Y.
The government cheats. The worse part is, you can't bloody well vote them out of office for cheating, because they've already taken away your right to vote.
"Well I'll just wait until I'm 25 and vote them out of office then!" What's keeping these people from increasing that age to 35 or 45, or just getting rid of the age requirement altogether? You can't fucking vote against them raising the age limit, can you?
"Well they can't ban everyone from voting." They don't have to. Here's a fun bit of etymological trivia: the term "grandfather clause" comes from exceptions built into the literacy test system that stated you don't have to take the test if your grandpa could vote. These exceptions were put in place soon after black people were first given the right to vote, so most white people were exempt but most black people had to take the test.
Don't think they'll put in an exception that lets their voters keep voting while preventing you from voting? They're already doing it. The average soldier is more likely to vote conservative than the average person of the same age bracket. That's why soldiers get the exception! No way they'd give the same exception to members of the Peace Corp, despite a Peace Corp member doing a hell of a lot more to fulfill their civic duty than a soldier, because those people are bloody liberals.
A more present day firsthand comparison for people: states banning abortion didn’t lead to those states also providing services to the women they force to give birth. The whole point of those states banning abortion isn’t actually to “protect life,” it’s to ruin the lives of women.
This is the same concept with young voters. If a “civics education” even actually did happen, you can bet it would be full of disinformation that’s supposed to force people to accept Republican bullshit or else not get to vote.
Voter ID is also a modern case of this - they framed it as a way to fight voter fraud, and in a vacuum, it sounds neutral...but that ignores how Republicans simultaneously made it more difficult to get IDs, and that voter fraud as they frame it basically doesn't happen (since, well, their side are the only ones trying to do organized voter fraud)
I can't imagine what a nightmare a civics test written by the far-right would be. Imagine having to answer that Biden stole the election in 2020 or that the Civil War was about "state's rights" to vote
I think that people who balk at the phrase "all cops are bastards" might be helped out with "good cops don't last."
Sooner or later, every cop will encounter a situation where they can be complicit or try to do something about it. A good cop will try to do something about it. They will encounter immediate resistance, and will be pressured to shut up and be complicit (whereupon they cease to be a good cop). If they persist, they can expect to be fired, harassed, thrown in a mental hospital, or even directly physically attacked and murdered.
Hell, if they're in the NYPD, after they're done with you they'll probably make a commemorative challenge coin about it.
All cops are bastards because good cops don't last. You are absolutely not allowed to be a good cop.
Left: Composer Leonard Bernstein. Right: Bradley Cooper and the world's worst fake nose playing Leonard Bernstein in the upcoming movie Maestro.
like holy fuck this is actual anti-semitism literally all you had to do was hire a Jewish actor. ONE JEWISH ACTOR, HOLLYWOOD, IT'S NOT THAT HARD.
Bradley Cooper is the Ron DeSantis of desperate to win an Oscar. the harder he tried, the more I hate him.
omfg
A reminder of what Bradley Cooper's nose actually looks like when compared to Leonard Bernstein's:
Literally zero reason a fake nose was needed. This is bullshit. And it's Cooper's "passion project" okay. This is very important to note. This is a project he considers utterly necessary to his artistic endeavors, and he not only didn't cast a Jew to play Bernstein, he's wearing a fucking Halloween costume nose.
Please don't forget, Bradley Cooper pretty much stole the exclusive rights to the Bernstein biopic from Jake Gyllenhaal - a Jewish man - who has said he's been wanting to tell this story for twenty fucking years.
so um….looks like Bradley Cooper (goy) has been cast to play Leonard Bernstein, a Jewish man, in his upcoming film Maestro (a biopic about a real Jewish composer). rather than hiring a Jewish actor to tell a story about a Jewish man, they cast a goy…who will be wearing a prosthetic nose.
and if that weren’t enough - they cast Carrie Mulligan, an Irish woman, to play Leonard’s wife…who was a Latina. and Maya Hawke, a white woman who is neither Latina nor Jewish, has been cast to play their daughter.
AND don’t forget that Bradley Cooper grabbed the rights to Bernstein’s music before Jake Gyllenhaal, A JEWISH MAN WHO WAS GOING TO MAKE A BIOPIC ABOUT BERNSTEIN, was able to. we could have had a respectful biopic about a Jewish man, told by Jews. instead we get this.
i…don’t have words to explain how insidious this is. the absolute goydacity to keep a Jewish man from telling this story, whitewash the other people in a true story, and to cast a goy instead of a Jewish person to tell a true story about a Jewish man, and have that goy wear a prosthetic nose. they would rather Jew-ify a goy than cast an actual Jew. i’m disgusted.
yr locked in a room alone with three adult men but you feel perfectly safe. who are they
I mean, I feel safe from them but I’m suddenly EXTREMELY worried about what shenanigans I’ve stumbled into
“These men mean me no harm”
“So you feel safe now?”
“Oh, absolutely not”
Every time someone well-meaning suggests I see a chiropractor for my migraines, I have this little moment of "ah, you're new here. You weren't here prior to 2018 when a chiropractor very gently adjusted my neck for my migraines, and I ended up having to get an emergency MRI because the ensuing symptoms were indicative of a brain bleed."
It wasn't a brain bleed. The muscles on the entire right side of my neck "just" tore (Spoiler there is nothing "just" about that kind of traumatic injury. I am still in physical rehab for it), and I couldn't hold my head up, see straight, walk or do any of the things I'd previously taken for granted until several weeks later when the area finally started to heal.
This was before I knew I had Ehlers Danlos, btw. But this is true even for people who don't have a connective tissue disorder: Don't let chiropractors touch your neck.
There are a lot of vital nerves and blood vessels there, and even gentle adjustments of the area can have life-threatening consequences.
I know chiropractic care can be pain relieving--I still get it for my lower back and hips because I work with a chiropractor who knows about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and sometimes my hips need to be popped back in at short notice, and it's easier to hop walk in and see her than wait for physical therapy--but it is a short-term relief that doesn't actually correct why something is happening.
If you can afford it, physical therapy will likely help more in the long term. I know not everyone can afford it, and that's why chiropractors have such a booming trade in the US, but please, I'm begging you, don't get your neck adjusted.
The spinal cord specialist I saw after my injury told me the number one reason he used to see people for traumatic brain injuries was car wrecks, followed by other major roadside injuries. He said those numbers were still the highest, but after that, the majority of his patients were survivors of chiropractic injury.
Do Not Get Your Neck Adjusted.
It's been over 5 years, and I still can't move my neck properly on my right side. I still struggle to eat and drink because my muscles will randomly seize up. It feels like my skull no longer fits on top of my spine because of the scar tissue. Please. I just want people to be safe.
And if you are a chiropractor reading this and thinking, "Well, I've never injured anyone, skill issue." No. You Have Gotten Lucky. Rethink how you apply your trade. Please, you can still help people while recommending safer options for specific body parts. Learn to do pressure point release and acupressure. Teach patients how to stretch and relax the area safely. Just fucking stop cracking people's necks like pop rock candy.
I think it’s important to remember that executive dysfunction doesn’t just apply to doing chores (work, cleaning, etc). It also makes it difficult to engage with your hobbies.
Some people don’t seem to understand that when I say that I don’t have the motivation to do something that I have said I want to do, it has nothing to do with not being interested enough in said thing. It is just that my brain is not allowing me to do it even though I want to.
this is so upsetting, PLEASE rb to spread awareness
PLEASE, PLEASE REBLOG THIS, WHETHER YOURE JEWISH OR NOT.
THIS IS A SUPER IMPORTANT PART OF OUR HISTORY, DONT LET IT GET DESTROYED.
perhaps help take steps to stop them now from future attempts...
Because I'm only seeing other Jews posting about this, non-Jews I need you to be aware that for the past month or two there has been a wave of bomb threats and swattings at synagogues all across the US. They usually do it when services are being livestreamed. I haven't seen a single non-Jew talking about this. High holidays are coming up in a few weeks, which is when most attacks happen against our communities. We're worried, and we need people to know what's happening to us.
this is awful on its own, but on top of everything else it has lead to cops and other law enforcement swarming synagogues, which is a one way ticket to all jews of color feeling too unsafe to enter. This is a fucking nightmare
Nooot looking forward to how much more security there’s probably going to be for the high hols than the increased amount there usually is. This shit is going to be extra costly for shuls who’s security budgets are already pretty tight.
don't hide this in the tags, it doesn't exist if this is what we're forced to do, esp bc it means most JOC can't freely practice their religion at all
people discovering steven universe in 2023 are always like "this show is really good why the hell were yall so weird about it"
#LITERALLY ME#I could probably find the conversation with my friend where I was like#‘yeah I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop bc I heard all the Bad Show Propaganda and then uh. That shoe never dropped. Good show.’
As someone that was there and started blocking the SU Crit tag because of so many bad faith accusations, yeah I think I can say a bit of what happened. Might be a bit disjointed but these are the things that I remember happening.
First thing was the release schedule. The Steven Bombs. Releasing like five episodes in one week and then nothing for months. This was something that CartoonNetwork had control over and might have been something that they tried to use to get Steven Universe to stop being so popular because it was gestures pretty queer.
If Steven Universe was a show that every episode was a stand alone, this wouldn't have been an issue, but it was a linear story. So major developments could drop; major character reveals/fuck-ups could happen and then the fandom would just sit on those for months. Instead of getting the next part of the story that resolved whatever just happened the fandom could sit there and stew in theories and emotions. So characters messing up would be blown out of proration and the resolution wouldn't feel like it actually enough effort on the one that messed up end.
One example was Cry for Help. When Pearl tricked Garnet into fusing more often. If I remember right, we didn't get to Pearl and Garnet actually talking out what happened there until months after the fact. In story not much time had past but for the audience that was plenty of time for people to be offended on Garnet's behalf and distort what happened.
Anther issue was "Gem Harvest" dropped right around the 2016 election. You know when Trump became president. This was made long before the election, but there were people who took that timing as somehow Rebecca Sugar and the Crew saying stuff that they weren't. I would also say this was when the discourse really took off. If that episode had aired when the crew thought it would, probably a year or months before then, I don't think people would have misread it was much as they did. It was about communication and also Uncle Andy is the one that had to realize that the way he acted had caused him to be isolated from his family. This wasn't Steven had to "make his racist uncle no longer racist all on his own" but "Steven gave him encouragement that it wasn't too late to change". But the timing was terrible and the Crew had no control on that. The Steven Bombs made several seasons last for years when they should have been over in some months.
Second, studio interference that fandom blamed on Rebecca Sugar and the Crew. The scheduling, the ending of the show feeling rushed; those were things that parts of the fandom blamed on the crew not the network. There were people that I recall saying that the crew just needed to change how Steven Universe was written to fit with the bomb format better, when the bomb format wasn't something that the crew ever wanted. That wasn't the show style that they were telling. The show got axed because Rebecca Sugar and the Crew wouldn't drop the wedding. They wanted it there because it was important to have in a kid's show. But because they stuck to their guns the rest of the story had to be speed up, and people thought that the crew should have written the ending better; when that ending was planned to have at least another season, not a week long set of episodes. Steven Universe was set up to be a long term story. One that gave time to each character to unpack their mindset and issues. But they couldn't do that with the Diamonds.
Third, people not understanding the theme of the show. Steven Universe was about family, emotions, and open communication solving issues. Characters resolved their issues by talking about them. By being open about what the issues were. That was the reason Gem War happened; because open communication because Pink Diamond and the other Diamonds just couldn't happen. We see that Steven is at his worst when he bottles up his emotions or refuses to talk about an issue that he knows he has. But despite this theme by the time we got to Change Your Mind, people were cheering for the idea of Steven shattering the Diamonds. Which ignores the theme of the show; communication. There were people that wanted Steven to kill the Diamonds when this wasn't that type of show. Steven always hated when he couldn't talk to another character and had to bubble them. Why would this kid resort to killing? That goes against the themes of this show.
Fourth, the rushed ending. The events of Change Your Mind, was something that the crew wanted to be its own season. I imagine that if the crew had gotten what they wanted we would have spent more time on Homeworld with Steven getting to know the Diamonds and sorting out their issues. Blue Diamond would have been first since we had set up with her character first. We saw her living with the regrets of losing Pink Diamond and now not doing her duties as a Diamond. But because of how rushed the ending had to be at that point the audience didn't get that time that they had wanted. Think about how long Lars's arc was. That was several seasons long. If they had gotten a season with the Diamonds like they wanted people probably wouldn't have thought that the ending was rushed.
Fifth, bad faith criticism and very toxic fandom. As I said I blocked the SU Crit tag because after a certain point people would take anything and start shoving completely off the rails criticisms at the show and expect everyone to take them in good faith. Like people claiming that Sugar, a Jewish creator, was a Nazi Apologist because Steven didn't kill the Diamonds. People projected things onto elements of the story that weren't there. People would take a screen shot and call it lazy animation because a character was off model for a fraction of a second that wouldn't be noticed without slowing it down. There was a lot of bad faith criticism. Some of it was probably from people that didn't like how queer Steven Universe was and hid it as saying it wasn't progressive enough. There were probably people that thought that a kid's show was actually not progressive enough without looking at everything behind the scenes that the creators were dealing with. There were fans that drove one of the story-boarders/writers off the show because on her own Twitter account she posted shipping art of two of the characters (Lapis Lazuli and Peridot). It was just one member of the crew showing that she liked the dynamic between two characters that was not cannon and people started harassing them. There was a lot of entitlement from the fandom.
All of those things combined just made for a terrible time.
TL;DR: The show schedule being all over the place, studio interference, people not understanding the theme of the show, the rushed ending, and a toxic fandom with bad faith criticisms all led to the show having the worst reputation. I would say that the show schedule and studio interference played the biggest part of it since other parts stemmed issues that those created.
Agreed with all of this, but as a sort of continuation of point three:
The danger of adults watching a children's show because "It's so good it could be an adult's show!" is exactly this. Shows that are literally and explicitly for kids have much simpler messaging. One of my least favourite sentences in the world is when you remind someone who is whining about a piece of children's media for not doing what they wanted out of the story that it's aimed at kids and they say "But being for kids doesn't mean it can't still be good!"
Bitch it IS good. 'Good' doesn't mean 'Does the stuff adults want so it feels satisfying and fulfilling to adults'. It means 'Does the stuff the target audience wants and successfully conveys to that audience its message.' Adults are not the target audience. Get a grip and remember you're a guest. Your enjoyment is not the point. You cannot say "The Animaniacs sucked because there was no character development and they would suddenly sing educational songs - I wanted more world building about what these alien things were and how they got into the water tower and what that means for the fabric of American society" IT WAS A KID'S SHOW THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY AND EDUCATIONAL. AND IT WAS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
In the case of Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar once said the aim was to 'redefine masculinity' for children - the point of the show is that Steven is surrounded by powerful women without ever feeling emasculated, and is properly and healthily connected to his emotions. He's not afraid to cry. He's open with his fears. He goes through increasing trauma, and the moral of that is 'Dont bottle up, talk to your loved ones.'
And, crucially, his first and primary response to antagonism is "Let's talk about this" and not "Let's punch this."
It was adults who turned that into a "Talk to Nazis uwu" parable, and then got mad about it; children, the target audience, did not. Children are people who are very much still learning how to process their emotions and handle conflict on the playground. Young boys are learning that they aren't allowed to cry or have feelings other than anger. Young girls are learning that they aren't allowed power and strength. All children are being told that a family can only look one way, that love can only follow one path. SU provided clear role models to the contrary and was extremely valuable for that.
And then adults projected real world political allegories onto it because that's how adult fiction works, and decided that meant it was bad and that Rebecca Sugar, a queer Jewish enby, was actually a Nazi apologist. Just a trash fire of a fandom
