Ugh, was having a great time mocking my recently imprisoned rival when I noticed the camera positioning makes it so that I appear behind the bars, thus framing me as trapped in a metaphorical prison of the narrative, now my whole day is ruined. Fuck.

I get it, man. The other day, I survived a shootout, only to realize that a stray bullet went through a mirror in such a way as to look from the camera's perspective like I got shot in the head through the mirror, so now I have to acknowledge that something that could be reasonably referred to as "me" really did die that day, and it's just like "jfc, gimme a BREAK"

ugh dont even get me started on how the other day i tried to sit on the throne of my conquered foe and light a cigar to celebrate my victory but the lighter wouldnt work and it had to be lighted by the vizier who used to work for my enemy but that i enlisted to work as a double agent and help me in my coup. that jerk afterwards said with a devilish smile "ill always be at your service my liege" and i just KNOW that he said that exact same thing to the previous ruler. signifying that my victory was phyrric since i am still caught in an endless cycle of violence and betrayal. that really spoiled the whole mood

Tuberculosis is both a form and an expression of global injustice: A disease that has been curable since the mid-1950s is nonetheless the world's deadliest infectious disease in 2024.

Guide For The Geological Time Periods In Order

Wheat fields are more mystical than fields of other crops. You are 7,000 times more likely to meet an old god or see a portent of doom in a wheat field than in a field of like… soybeans.

For your consideration: cornfields

Cornfields are less mystical than wheat fields but more mystical than soybean fields. Two-bit monsters congregate in corn fields to eat people, but their power is nothing compared to the things that manifest in wheat fields. 

Have been in both wheat and cornfields; can confirm. Cornfields host monsters who eat people. Wheat fields attract old gods. 

I have a theory that this is because the notions most of us have of “old gods” are pretty intrinsically European, and wheat was (and is) the staple crop of European life. It is quite literally tied to the ancestral rituals and beliefs of most white people. Odin, the Morrigan, and even Zeus are actually linked to a set of peoples who cultivated wheat.

Meanwhile, corn (maize) is a crop native to the Americas. It features in the white cultural imagination in a very different way. Corn is a motif seen not in our ancestral myths, but in a much newer genre: the American Gothic. With its focus on the tensions between man and nature and—perhaps more importantly—the United States’s history of genocide against its indigenous population and trade in enslaved Africans, the American Gothic is VERY preoccupied with agriculture. Our monsters come out of corn fields because corn is a symbol for not only what we did to the Native Americans (who were the first to grow the crop), but of what we are doing to the very land itself. Corn is a monument to our cultural sins.

Meanwhile, I suspect that corn features very differently in the imaginations of people of color. If you asked a Native American person or a Latinx person what sort of mysticism they associate with corn fields, I imagine their answer would be very different than ours.

TLDR: White people associate wheat with our ancestors’ gods because our ancestors grew wheat. We associate corn with terrible monsters because it is a literal sign of our own monstrosity.

Native American here, can confirm that small plots of corn feel safe and homey; ideally they should be interplanted with other crops. You find turkeys and possums and raccoons in the corn. It might tell you important knowledge.

However.

Giant monocultures of corn, where the corn grows unbroken for miles and miles, not near human habitation, devoid of local wildlife, just corn on corn in the soft wind? Corn mega monocultures? Those sound like screaming.

“monocultures attract people-eating monsters” is not the take I expected to see today but I’m glad I saw it

The anthropological analysis and discussion on folklore is spot on. 10/10

Corn lore

@spiritspodcast

as a brit we have big feelings about oat fields and their glossiness and amazing sounds they make in the wind - and how swans land on them thinking they’re rivers (which it pretty fairy story really)

The thing I keep coming back to, with all the *gestures expansively* is that real life doesn't have peaceful epilogues.

Every single win has to be defended. Forever. I'm sorry. It sucks. The Nazis lost until they stopped losing. The US had abortion rights, and then 50 years later it didn't. Empires fall, and then they invade other countries again. Oppressive regimes are overthrown and replaced with other oppressive regimes. You will never finish the work etc etc etc. Which is why it's so fucking important to be able to acknowledge and celebrate progress, when it happens. The people who came before you didn't put in all that work for nothing, and you aren't, either. You can't save it all for the Ultimate Victory because there is never going to be an Ultimate Victory. There's no such thing as a time when everything is good, and ours shall not be the commune of Heaven.

His current plan is to boost Florida’s economy by investing in city infrastructure and green energy, to give back to the middle class that, he believes, kept Florida running, and wishes to further protect from climate change by investing in both state wide and country wide green policies. Russell also wishes to dismantle discrimination in his state and country, protect families and workers through affordable housing and wages, to address gun reform and the use the new bipartisan background check act, and, finally, wishes to institute reproductive rights for all and focus on women’s issues in the state.

This NPR interview with with Angela Saini about how race science never really left the global scientific consciousness is super interesting! I’m gonna read her book!

my girlfriend has been talking about this since ancestry kits became A Thing

"little schemer", hand-punched, 2023

7.5" x 5.5"

it's also realizing that these movies existed because adults felt like those ants. They wanted to organize and do something and they felt like they couldn't so they made those movies for us. So that the next generation of workers would understand their fate and power and be motivated to change our reality.

I'm an anticapitalist because some people at Pixar a long time ago put all of their faith and hope into teaching kids, that we deserved better. And that one day we'd be big enough to fight for it.

I've grown.

And I'm ready to punch some crickets in the face.

Are you ants or crickets???

Sign the strike card!!!!!

If y'all get this to 500,000 I'll shave my head

Can i just say? THIS? This is how you organize a general strike

Notice how they're *organizing* us first instead of just saying "GENERAL STRIKE, THIS DATE, MAKE IT HAPPEN"! Because sadly, the latter DOES NOT WORK. You call a general strike without preparing people for it, and you've got a handful of folks losing their jobs, a bunch of folks too afraid or confused to strike, and a WHOLE LOT OF FOLKS who just outright don't know its even happening. Last "general strike for gaza", nothing ground to a halt because nobody was ready for it. Its impact was nonexistent.

This though? If you get 3.5% of the populace on board its enough to send this shit to a shaking stop. And if we never reach that level, its proof we weren't ready yet.

Sign your strike cards. Get yourself ready. This time we do this for real.

the online equivalent of the gom jabbar test is whether you're willing to refrain from dunking on an article based on the headline without reading it first

I've seen (not on this post) that it's unfair to have this expectation because paywalls exist and to that all i have to say is "read proposition 7 of wittgenstein's tractatus"

now that i am a real adult i am starting to realise. media lied to me about the availability of rooftops to go hang out on. every day i wish i could be hanging out on a rooftop somewhere looking cool as fuck

there is a huge difference between criticizing an institution and criticizing individual behavior. i can criticize the makeup industry without criticizing the 14 year old girl who uses concealer because she’s self-conscious about her acne; i can criticize the plastic surgery industry without vilifying the woman who decided to get a nose job after two decades of pointed comments and bullying. it is intellectually dishonest to respond to an institutional criticism as if it were a personal attack; on the flip side, it is cruel and unnecessary to leverage personal attacks in the name of institutional criticism

if i see one (1) more person respond to a perfectly reasonable beauty-industry-critical sentiment with “but i personally enjoy eyeshadow. why are you attacking people who like eyeshadow :(” or “exactly, all women who wear makeup are miserable and brainwashed” i am going to climb a tree and bite the top of it