walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
i think it’s an interesting setting for bruce springsteen songs but at the end of the day i’m glad america isn’t a real place
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
Photos: 1st, 2nd and 3rd taken by Linda McCartney - John Eastman (Linda's brother), Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Allen Klein, Ringo Starr, Maureen Starkey and Peter Howard during one of the Beatles' Apple meetings.
Last photo - Linda and Paul photographed by Maureen. 1969
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
The US is deeply segregated not only along racial lines, but along class lines as well: from housing to schools to healthcare, many of our major institutions are designed to allow rich people to keep poor people as far away from them as possible.
Where do rich and poor people interact with one another? If I'm reading this study right, it's restaurants. Which restaurants? They find that some of the most cross-class locations in the country are cheap full-service restaurants: "Olive Garden, Applebee’s, Chili’s and IHOP."
The more I think about this finding the more it makes sense. Places like Olive Garden are some of the only locations in US society which are simultaneously "nice" enough to draw in high-income diners and cheap enough to attract low-income diners. Rich people go to, say, Outback Steakhouse because they see it as a cheap and easy meal that's better than fast food, poor people go because it's one of the closest things to a nice steakhouse you can eat at without dropping $100+ per person.
Other cross-class locations: churches, libraries, credit unions, alcohol stores, the DMV. Locations which worsen class segregation: golf courses and country clubs, bars, museums.
This reminds me of the most fantastic book liveblogs I've ever read (by ozy thingofthings). It's Times Square Red Times Square Blue by Afrofuturist scifi author Samuel Delany.
(full but paywalled review by that liveblogger here, although the visible portion of the text should give you an idea of what a weird and fantastic book this is)
A lot of it is about The Venus Theater, which showed adult films until a push to close all the porn theaters also shut it down in 1970. It was pretty normal to jerk off in the theater and cruise for (mostly m/m?) sex – both of the sex worker and non sex worker variety (although the line was very blurry). It was normal to e.g. jerk off your neighbor.
Delany was a college professor at Amherst the time he was a Venus regular. He had social and sexual relationships with a large number of people he met at the Venus Theater, including homeless people – he kept up correspondence with many of them, including at least one who went to prison. When establishments like the Venus shut down, one reason he didn't like this was that he thought it was unhealthy for society to get rid of spaces with high levels of inter-class contact.
Delany draws a distinction contact and networking. The Venus was contact, and more formal "people of various backgrounds who are interested in X, come mingle" events are networking. And if you get rid of interclass contact spaces, interclass networking spaces have to 'take up the slack' of facilitating connections, and they... can't do it. Example about parenting from the linked blog post:
In a city, contact requires certain specific characteristics to thrive. You need socioeconomically diverse spaces with mixed commercial and residential uses, and which provide basic services like restaurants, public bathrooms, and small shops. Without that setup, you don’t get contact. (...) [If you're at a park close to your house and] there aren’t any public bathrooms, it’s a jerk move to not let a mom at the park your kids are playing at use the bathroom in your house, but you don’t want to just let any rando into your house. So you’re reluctant to talk to moms you don’t know. (Real thing!)
And here's Delany on the value of public spaces that facilitate sexual contact:
Similarly, if every sexual encounter involves bringing someone back to your house, the general sexual activity in a city becomes anxiety-filled, class-bound, and choosy. This is precisely why public rest rooms, peep shows, sex movies, bars with grope rooms, and parks with enough greenery are necessary for a relaxed and friendly sexual atmosphere in a democratic metropolis
After reading the above Delany quote I sat back in my chair, grinning wildly at the ceiling. You may not like it but this is what the optimal take looks like
Probably the first time in over a year I have seen a legitimately new take, game recognize game.
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
Trump would be such a good drag queen like just such an unbelievably incredible and talented drag queen it's such a bummer that he's decided to be a fascist and a threat to democracy because that cunt would devour at the House of Yes
such a loss
his cadence, his tiny bitchy hand gestures, his cunty little nicknames for people that are insane but also somehow stick to your brain?
“the problem with ron desanctimonious is that he needs a personality transplant, and those are...... noT yet available.”
if he’d laid the garbage fire of his entire soul aside for a wig and heels back in the 80s, we’d live in a better world.
(via @dragonprincessmew )
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
And after all the Down With Cis Bus has done for the queer community…. 😔
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
Untitled (rain drops), 2017 - Paul Manes (b. 1948) oil on canvas | source:
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
by Con Chrisoulis
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
gay af of jesus to have been a carpenter. what are you doing with another man’s wood?
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
something that can actually be so personal
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
zhou enlai stealing food from nixon, marking the beginning of chinas imperialist domination of america
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969).
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
hey good omens lovers how we feeling
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
an Iraqi gamer's beautiful review of Disco Elysium
[Image ID: Screenshot of a post from r/DiscoElysium by u/beamoon2016.
Text reads:
"Never thought I'd read a story that so effectively captures why life in a broken system is worth living"
"I grew up in Iraq. When people hear this in the US, where I now live, they usually say: "Wow…that must have been hard."
I mean? I guess? I've been a couple hundred meters from ISIS bombings. The government is spectacularly dysfunctional. You never know when the electricity might be on. Most summer days are 50 C. The tap water is salty.
And I also love the wonky little generators people wire everywhere. I love the weird shark statue with Saddam torn off the top. I love the guys fishing in the river despite the fact that it's greenish black. I love how excited everyone gets about the government building one tiny new overpass. I also love the random overpass sitting in the desert connected to zero roads. I love hearing our friend giggle as my dad ribs him for driving a Toyota Hilux, a favorite of terrorists transporting weapons. I love the stray cats that carefully pick their way over the barbed wire on our walls. I love the people that run towards a bombing instead of away because they want to help the survivors. I love the guy who fixed my glasses with a wrong-sized screw because he lived through sanctions and doesn't need dumb things like correctly-sized screws.
But it's almost impossible to explain this to most Americans. They picture a normal Iraqi life and think it would be their worst nightmare. So I'm used to just not sharing that part of my life, or ever seeing it in media.
So this game totally caught me off guard. We're in a setting in between apocalypses, starring an alcoholic fuckup from a corrupt occupier-aligned police force, who at best might keep a couple people from dying in a gang war. It's pretty bleak. It's also incredibly fucking joyful.
Just the prose alone is so sincere. You can't write stuff this goofy, flowery, beautiful, dumb, and moving ironically. The writers clearly love words far out of proportion to how much they might be able to actually change fundamentally broken systems.
And all the characters, the worldbuilding details, the interruptions from Shivers and Esprit de Corps, hell, all the bits and pieces of your brain. There's so much attention and thus so much love everywhere in this game for humans and what humans do. Doesn't matter if they might all get shot, blown up, or wiped clean by pale in a couple years. Doesn't matter if they brought it all on themselves. Right here, in this moment, they are human, and so they matter.
I feel like this game gets why my life in Iraq was worth living. Even if a lot of my fellow Americans think the world sure would be nicer and simpler if Iraqis just didn't exist.
I thought I had signed up for a fun 20-30 hour diversion, not the feeling of being loved?!" /End ID]
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
walkuntilthedaylight reblogged
Hypnotic collages of French artist @valentinpavageau