âWe can see that Nazism understands itself to be engaged in a culture war with Jews over gender roles and gender/sexual variance. But, just as we saw in the original National Socialist regime, Nazism also understands the fundamental terrain of this war to be on the level of biology. There is a deep anxiety expressed in Nazi and far-right thinking which is constantly concerned about the biological undermining of the white race yes, but also the white male, and his hormone balance, his testosterone level. Nazi political ontology understands the biological as one of, if not the most important terrains of political dispute. We know this in our understanding of Nazi race theory, but what has been neglected is the centrality of endocrinological purity and security to Nazi ideology. In this sense, endocrinological purity is the gender/sex corollary of the Nazi eugenic project of racial purity.â
â Joni Alizah Cohen, The Eradication of âTalmudic Abstractionsâ: Anti-Semitism, Transmisogyny and the National Socialist Project (via probablyasocialecologist)
the problem marxists have on disability is that they aren't reading marxist thought on disability and just kind of winging it. marta russell already laid out the political economy of disability in the global north in the 90s and global south scholars have their own (marxist) schools of thought on disability and have iterated on global north marxist disability analyses. disabled people are workers, most often. and handicapitalism (russell's term) has also turned disabled people into commodities. it's impossible to understand modern politics without engaging with these two realities.
(i'd never heard of this site before but from what i've found it's fully legal. It has a subscription model, but you can also buy comics individually and there's a bunch of free stuff too, mostly from small creators)
what are some of your favorite writings on romance? i read the tsitp one you'd linked in one sitting and was absolutely hooked
yayyy i'm so glad you liked it. sincerity & melodrama forever. my recs below hope you enjoy !!!
ok first of all i would like to recommend my mutual sexcromancy's AHU (ali hazelwood universe) tag that explores romance conventions and the sociopolitical implications of their execution across. well. the ali hazelwood universe ! & also the publishing industry . & classics . and the mainstream reception of & views on romance . really fun & comprehensive a cornerstone of my enjoyment in hetromance so far
i really liked this essay on how white fear killed the romantic comedy bc it talks abt how racism is kind of foundational to popular romance in a way that's (as edward said has called it) "productive" to its reactionary sentiments & of course purposefully limiting from a feminist & antiracist perspective. discussions of race in romance are so interesting to me it's why i enjoy rgu & heated rivalry so much -- even if the text itself only hints at the race relations driving the frictions between the characters, the way they are baked into the very premise of the story allows for enriching readings for the reader/viewer
speaking of racialization in romance i have to recommend edward said's essay on mansfield park which may not be directly abt romance but given austen's position in the landscape is an essential read nonetheless, imo.
also this essay on the racist overtones of the bodice ripper felt like a breath of fresh air for how it charts the implications of such a popular & problematic romance trope (all romance tropes are problematic in the sense that there are problems posed & problems solved.......racialization is foundational to the way these problems are posed and solved. helen from pluribus voice make raban the love interest sexy & alluring ! give him dreads ! like. it's inescapable)
of course you can't talk abt western hetromance without talking about sex & the city. i forgot how funny andrea long chu is but this essay reminded me
It's a strength of the show, then, that it never wastes any of its runtime trying to persuade us that men are desirable, either individually or as a class. The men on this show are not expected to talk, and certainly not to make conversation. They are whisked through montages, like politicians into SUVs, the music and narration huddling around them protectively. Mercifully, we are never put through the agony of having to go on a fully realized date with any of them. They are not people; they are examples. Their job is simply to be there.
like lol.....exactly
this essay is kind of just propaganda for the book games, yes. (which i have not read (yet?)) but it also crystallizes a specific approach to hetromance (dialectics.......) that i love to ponder
i know you asked for readings but i love bazazilio's video essays on the romance genre particularly this one abt dark romance & this one abt passivity in romance protagonists. recommending these bc not only are they rlly interesting they also serve as a jumping off point--nearly everything she cites warrants further exploration. my kind of media rabbit hole
romance is predictable. we love romance for being predictable
i have not talked abt gay romance yet & that is bc my reading is lacking in that regard.......but this article abt lesbianism in shoujo i really loved
book recs:
the promise of happiness. yes i keep proselytizing bc it's that good & also has a chapter on romance if you wld just like to stick to that
sexuality beyond consent: risk, race & traumatophilia. i've been meaning to read this foreverrr the excerpts so far have blown me away
territory of desire: representing the valley of kashmir. for the relationship between romance fiction & colonialism (watch haider)
playing in the dark for the way it talks abt the role Blackness plays in conceptualization of the Other in the american literary imagination -- very relevant to a literary tool as widespread as the romantic framework used often as a microcosm of larger social/political dynamics
i could go on but that's enough for now i think. happy reading ^_^
NO MORE EXCUSES
YOU CAN NOW READ SO MANY WEBCOMICS WITH THIS TAGGED CATALOGUE!
YOU CAN ALSO SUBMIT YOUR COMIC IF YOU MAKE ONE
CHECK OUT THE WEBCOMIC TRAVELOGUE!!!
i am very proud of this project!!! My friends and I worked really hard to make it happen, so please check it out!
Hello, anyone else want to dive down the "old books about embroidery" rabbit hole? They're free! They have pictures! (We found a plate of a Katherine Parr book cover **star eyes**)
but on the real though, here is your guide to assyrian rice preparation from your friendly neighborhood assyrian:
start wanting rice. (or, if you are traditional, simply recognize your constant desire for rice.)
measure out two cups of rice. then one more. then two more. then another. this seems fine. you love rice. there is no way that this will backfire on you.
remember that your great-great-uncleâs recipe says it should be soaked overnight.
become consumed with despair.
decide to soak it for half an hour instead, acknowledging that the final product will be inferior and anger your ancestors but will still satisfy your now almost-overwhelming need for rice to be inside your body much faster.
remember that you should have set the water to boil when you soaked the rice. goddammit.Â
once the water boils, put the rice in until it is half-cooked. the eyeballing or intuitive method is less effective than a timer but thatâs how your aunt does it so you feel compelled to meet her standards.
now that the rice has fluffed up, realize how much rice six dry cups really is. holy shit. youâve fucked up immeasurably.Â
take a minute to dwell upon your failings.
grease a baking dish with butter. this will never be as elegant as you want it to and your fingers will get greasy, but the slightly shameful, self-indulgent joy of licking your fingers afterwards will make up for it.
pour the rice into the dish. wonder immediately if you actually buttered the dish beforehand and if youâve just fucked up.Â
melt approximately one thousand pounds of butter in the microwave and pour it over the rice, pondering your imminent death from rapid-onset arterial clogging. put a small pat of butter on the top to properly gild the lily.
put your pan into the oven, which you have absolutely preheated after your previous lack of foresight. shake the rice once or twice while it bakes to make sure the butter is well distributed. resist the impulse to climb into the oven with the rice. for the last ten minutes, sit next to the oven and count the seconds until itâs done.
remove the dish from the oven. shed a tear or two at the perfection laid before you. if you are dining with others, this is the time to serve the rice while making passive-aggressive statements about how oh no, you donât need any help, you just made dinner all by yourself, you can serve everyone as well. (this is still fun if done alone, but optional.)
CONSUME THE RICE.
realize that you have eaten half of the dish in one sitting. no matter how much rice you made, this will always happen.Â
put the leftovers away, if there are any, and enjoy a cup of chai while marveling at the amount of food you have just eaten. if possible, fall asleep in an armchair, sitting up, head tilted slightly back, like a grandpa.
for the rest of the evening, think fondly of how much rice you have in the fridge now and how many meals it will supplement, refusing to acknowledge that you will almost certainly eat the rest of it in a few hours for a midnight meal.
for anyone who wants it, here is my familyâs actual recipe for assyrian baked rice:
1lb / approx. 2 â cups basmati rice (any long-grain rice will do)
3 tbsp salt
8 tbsp / 1 stick butter (you can reduce this if you donât want to have a heart attack)
Put the rice in a pot and cover it in cold water and salt. Let it soak overnight. (If you donât have the time to soak it, rinse the rice with cold water until it runs clear.)
Edit: The reason you want to soak basmati and other aromatic rice before cooking is to preserve more acetylpyrroline, the compound that gives aromatic rice its characteristic scent and flavor. Soaking rice allows the grains to absorb water, which reduces the cooking time, which means less time for the acetylpyrroline to cook off. Itâll still taste pretty good if you canât do this, but you donât want âpretty goodâ, you want mind-blowing, so for that perfect flavor youâll want to soak your rice overnight. The soaking process also washes away the layer of starch on the outside of the rice, which allows the grains to separate rather than sticking together; this is why you want to rinse your rice thoroughly if you donât have time to soak it.
Preheat your oven to 325°.
Boil three quarts of water in a separate pot. Once itâs at a fast boil, drain the rice and add it to the water. Boil for 5-7min or until one grain tastes half-cooked, but not soft. Pour the rice into a colander and rinse with cold water.
Edit: This step also helps get rid of any remaining starch on your grains, for perfectly separated rice. If your colander or strainer has large holes, you can put a paper towel/cheesecloth/clean dishcloth on the inside in order to drain your rice. Pour carefully if youâre using a paper towel, though, and put a bowl underneath your colander; I once lost a heartbreaking amount of rice when my paper towel got oversaturated and tore open.
Liberally grease the bottom of your baking pan with some of your butter. Pour the rice on top. Melt the rest of the butter in the microwave and pour on top of the rice.
Bake for 45min. (If you like, cover the rice for part or all of the baking time, but I find it gets less crispy on top if you do this.) Shake the pan a couple times during baking to ensure that the butter distributes throughout the entire dish.
Eat.
Serves four. Can easily be scaled up if needed (or down, but why would you do that?). Best enjoyed with a nice cup of chai.
The question of who is responsible for feeding people â and how â is back on the table. Nourish Scotland has been making the most rigorous case for public restaurants in the UK (and increasingly beyond i) â and Abigail McCall has helped bring that work into wider food-systems conversations, engaging many of us thinking about public restaurants as part of the food infrastructure we need. Their argument is straightforward: food needs public infrastructure, just as transport, healthcare, and education do. We build hospitals because the market alone does not guarantee health. We build schools because access to education cannot depend on what families can afford. We build public libraries, public parks, public transit. Why not public restaurants?
Food is as essential as any of these â more so, arguably, since we need it three times a day. And yet we largely leave its provision to market forces that have consistently failed to make healthy, sustainable, delicious food accessible and affordable to everyone.
[...]
If you prefer to frame it in terms of efficiency rather than rights: unhealthy diets cost billions in healthcare spending every year. Malnourished children learn less and earn less. And though this argument strikes me as overly productivist, Iâll leave it here anyway: workers who cannot afford a decent lunch are less productive. And market forces have not aligned profit with population wellbeing when it comes to food. The food industry has been extraordinarily effective at making ultraprocessed, nutrient-poor food cheap, convenient, and omnipresent. Making nutritious, sustainable food affordable has been far less of a priority. Thatâs not a moral failure of the market â itâs how markets work.
Public restaurants are one tool in a much larger set of policies to improve food environments â alongside front-of-package labeling, taxes on ultraprocessed foods, subsidies for fresh produce, stronger school feeding programs. All of this can work together, with public restaurants anchoring a procurement system that sources from smallholder farmers and supports an agroecological transition. What public restaurants add is a physical space where good food is not a privilege.
2. The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard
3. "Abolitionists turned the tables on Europeans by accusing them of being cannibals when they ate sugar tainted with the flesh and blood of slaves."
4. Zombies (which I would class as cannibals, since they were human and need to eat humans to live) have a root in Haitian folklore and represented enslavement.
adding that, if you can find it, cannibal culture by deborah root is about exactly this. the way the white western world is a hungry, destructive force that cannibalizes non-white cultures and creates wealth and status through the cannibal colonization of those cultures.
here's the intro
i almost think there's an essay in bell hooks' black looks about this too? yes! just checked, there's an essay called "eating the other"
this book is out now!!! it's a short read, less than 200 pages, and it's SO good. i literally had to pause halfway through just to send the author a message about how much i liked it. definitely leans more utopian than scientific, but that makes sense given the format, and i think it has a lot of good things to say.
once you really start thinking about how restrictive the world is for children and how many bullshit justifications we retroactively come up for it all the time, you can't stop seeing it everywhere. this book makes a good case for including children in our political efforts not as rhetorical devices but as an actual class of oppressed people.
okay!! here you go. if you make them please show me!! it would make me happy :)
½ cup/about 113g butter
small sprig of rosemary -- about an inch long
ž cup/185g brown sugar (dark brown if you can get it)
Âź cup/60g granulated sugar
about ½ cup/100g sourdough discard -- can be replaced with 50g flour 50g water
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons/8g vanilla extract
1 â cups/175g all purpose flour
½ teaspoon/3g baking soda
½ teaspoon/3g baking powder
½ teaspoon/4g salt
about a cup/ about 175g of dark chocolate chips
instructions under the cut ^_^
1. brown your butter. chop it up into chunks and place it in a saucepan on medium heat to melt. stir gently but continuously with a spoon or spatula as it heats up. it will begin to bubble as the water content starts boiling off, then start to foam up.
2. keep stirring, and turn the heat down a bit if it starts foaming too much. the trick is to keep an eye on the butter below the foam -- the color of the little yellow bits floating in the fat will start to change. add your rosemary to the saucepan now.
3. when it starts changing color it will get darker fast, so pay attention and don't let it burn. keep gently stirring until the butter smells caramely and looks nice golden brown. take it off the heat and pour the butter into a bowl so it doesn't keep cooking in the residual heat of the pan, making sure not to leave any milk solids behind. leave it to cool until it's comfortable to touch.
4. remove the sprig of rosemary from the butter and strip all the little leaves off into the butter. throw away the stick. add in the brown sugar, white sugar, sourdough discard, and egg yolk. beat for a few minutes with a whisk until light in color and fluffy.
5. in a different bowl, mix your flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together until all evenly incorporated. this will let you mix it into the fluffy sugar-egg-butter mixture without beating all the air out of it.
6. gently mix the flour mixture into the wet mixture. try not to be too rough, but mix until everything is evenly incorporated.
7. add the chocolate chips and fold them in.
8. chill the cookie dough. the brown butter in the dough is currently melted, so if you try to bake them now, the butter will just come out of the dough and the cookies will be strange, flat, and greasy. you want it to chill until cold to the touch and kind of stiff.
9. preheat your oven to 375° F/ 190° C. while it preheats, put your cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet. they'll be the prettiest shape if you make them cylinders standing on end instead of balls -- about twice as tall as they are wide. they'll melt downwards in the oven to have pretty folds, crispy edges, and a softer middle. this recipe makes 3 batches of 9 cookies when i make it. you can make them bigger or smaller, just remember to adjust your cooking time.
10. bake 10-15 minutes until the edges look nice and golden brown. i add a little bit of rosemary on top as a decoration at this point. let cool 5 minutes on tray and then move to a cooling rack, or devour.
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