Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
Ever wondered why there aren’t more fuchsia cars? The prejudice against bright colors runs deep and can be traced back to the age of Western
Text from the article:
"Would you paint your house a luscious purple? Would you drive a pink car? Would you dress head-to-toe in sunshine yellow? If you said yes, you’re in the minority.
That’s not because gray houses, white cars, and black suits are inherently appealing. Color norms and preferences have a deep history, and according to the art theorist David Batchelor, “In the West…color has been systematically marginalized, reviled, diminished, and degraded.” This marginalization of color has led to collective chromophobia, or fear of color.
Chromophobia has a complex past spanning millennia, but the age of Western colonial expansion put it on steroids. Over the course of the last few centuries, color became a powerful visual indicator of a person’s perceived social, intellectual, and racial status.
There's nothing neutral about neutrals. Read on to learn why we all need a little more color in our lives.
Chromophobia Is a Form of Control
Your initial objection to the concept of chromophobia might be that it’s simple to look around and see plenty of color: green trees, blue sky, vibrant flowers. None of these inspire fear.
But consider this: In the things that we make or buy, color tends to be reined in. (Note, when I say “we,” I’m speaking of a dominant American and European approach to color. Many cultures embrace color, as I’ll explore below.)
For example, it’s fashionable to wear a “pop” of color, but unacceptable for your average American man to show up to a business meeting in a hot pink suit. Large doses of vivid color can seem like an assault on the senses. It’s too “loud.” Too “tacky.”
Chromophobic societies don’t do away with color altogether. They control it.
Just think of all the rules we have for colors: pastels are for the spring; muddy green clashes with bold red; saturated orange is fine for a front door, but your homeowners’ association would shudder if the whole house were orange. All of us know what primary colors are and that red is “warm.”
These rules have become second nature to us, but they aren’t timeless. The concept of primary colors only emerged in the eighteenth century, and the idea of warm colors developed in the nineteenth. In other words, these rules are the product of a particular historical era. And in that era, people were highly concerned about the “anarchy” of color.
There are many reasons color was perceived as socially threatening (too many to cover here), but one major driver was colonial expansion.
The Empire of Color
As European countries extended their trade networks, some of the most precious commodities they found were pigments. Elites reveled in pricey, cochineal-dyed garments and lapis lazuli-dappled paintings.
But as expensive colors grew cheaper and more widely accessible, a lot of powerful businessmen put up resistance. For example, during the seventeenth century, the British East India Company started importing cheap, brightly colored cotton from India. The wool and silk guilds were afraid of losing their stronghold on the market, so they asked lawmakers for protection. New regulations stipulated that the colorful cottons couldn't be sold in England; they had to be immediately exported to other markets.
So, Europeans took their colorful wares to places that would treasure them. West Africans had been using cloth as currency for centuries, and early European merchants learned they could trade colorful cloth for slaves. Europeans took colorful textiles and pigments from places like India, Southeast Asia, and Mexico and traded them for African slaves, many of whom were put to work producing more dyestuffs, like indigo.
Between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Western European countries aggressively expanded their claims on foreign lands. Previously, the goal had been to enslave Africans, but the new goal was to bring them into the consumer fold. European empires extracted resources (many of which were color-related), then traded them back to their colonial subjects for profit.
By tying chromophilic (color-loving) cultures together, Europeans built a highly lucrative and utterly exploitative economic system.
Superiority and Savagery
Meanwhile, back in Europe, people began associating bright colors with Other-ness, degeneracy, and inferiority. The German writer Goethe famously stated, “Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, and children have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness.”
That prejudice was still alive a century later. In 1912, the advertising executive Frank Parsons asserted, “Many Latin races, still somewhat primitive in taste, need [red] to meet their temperaments.” And in 1921, color psychologists like J.C.F. Grumbine still stressed, “The primary colors of red, yellow, and blue appealed to the elemental and simple minds of the savage.”
Some authors used pseudoscientific justification to support these claims. They argued that “savage” people needed stronger stimulation because they had duller senses. (This justification was also used by slaveowners who claimed slaves were “insensitive” to pain.)
Increasingly, so-called “good taste” became linked to “quiet colors,” or what we’d call neutrals today. For example, gentlemen only wore dark suits, and demure women never wore red. Over time, neutrals became the stamp of social and moral superiority, while too much saturation threatened a slippery slope back to “savagery.”
In short, color preferences became a weapon, a way to instantly label a person as “uncivilized” or inferior.
Let Go
The very idea of “good taste” draws on a deep well of cultural assumptions of what's “normal” or “refined.” There is no such thing as an inherently professional, respectable color. Those are categories that we’ve created, and frankly, they come with a lot of economic, social, and historical baggage.
It’s time to revisit those assumptions and loosen the reins. I’m not suggesting that everyone has to parade around in neon or toss neutrals out the window. But personally, I’d love to see a world that readily embraces color instead of restraining it. I’d like for us to overcome our collective chromophobia and say, “It’s okay to step out of my comfort zone! I’m going to have fun. Or, at least, I’m not going to judge others who do.” After all, what are we so afraid of?
This post was adapted and expanded from a 2013 post on Apartment Therapy."
There are more reasons to start wearing color if anyone needs more convincing
I've been to an exhibition on the history of men's fashion in the West and it explained that modern men's fashion has always been influenced by the military uniforms of its time.
When the battlefield relied on cannons and was covered in smoke and dust, it was necessary for the soldiers to dress in bright colors, so that they could easily tell friend from foe in lowered visibility. And because tailors (craftsmen making clothing specifically for men) were hired to make military uniforms, the same tailors started to make everyday civilian clothes to mimic the military style. Because military uniforms accentuate masculine features (on purpose), and the society loves to accentuate the differences between men and women.
Then the battlefield changed and military moved to use dull, masking colors, to ensure the soldiers are harder to be hit by precise guns of the time. And similarly, men's fashion also stopped using bright colors. Because the "ideal man" (a soldier) never wore bright colors, so obviously anyone who wants to be masculine will want to avoid bright colors, or so the tailors said.
Masking colors are still in use in military these days, which explains why men's fashion still overwhelmingly uses dull colors. As for women's fashion also being dull, I don't have much academic knowledge here but id guess that since the West is a patriarchal culture then anything that's applicable to men becomes the norm everyone else has to follow.
the real secret to being good at cooking (this is different from being a chef) is to get principles down instead of recipes. observationally, this is why a lot of people can make a fancy meal for one but flounder about feeding visiting company
so, you know, I give the same advice there for adults that I do for teenagers, which is that you should memorise the broad groups of ingredients based on what they do (eg a soy sauce is culinarily a type of fish sauce despite not containing fish, because it does what a fish sauce does) and from there it's mostly similar to painting. also this is not true of baking, which is alchemy
once you've got the small stuff down, the real Cooking Secret is that there is no such thing as cheese, and also half of cooking fancy is just telling people what ingredients you want them to taste before they take their first bite
why is it that ppl hear "fetish" and immediately think "devoid of morals" like ur genuinely not making sense. ppl dont actually become inhuman and beast-like when theyre turned on, thats something we are told bc it aligns with christian patriarcal values, u know that right? desire isnt actually bad. it doesnt make you evil, or incapable of having/respecting boundaries
i got a response to this abt how men get horny and "lose their minds" and "causes" them to behave vile. i rlly rlly neeeeed ppl to understand that men behaving inappropriately when turned on is something they are *choosing* to do, and when you equate that to human nature you are enabling them and diminishing the seriousness of that choice
Reblogging again now that Russell Brand's ugly mug is back in the news to remind everyone that in the 2023 Times expose on his abusive behaviour, Daniel Sloss was the only male comedian willing to be named and quoted like "yeah that dude's a scumbag and women have been warning each other about him for years."
ok so this is another long shot but a few years ago there was a twitter post (in japanese i think?) that had measurememts for how to make this book stand thing out of cardboard that you could use to double up books and use up more space on shelves
back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore
if it comes down to it i can just take one apart and get the measurements from there but i would be very grateful if anyone happens to have the original post or something similar??
don't mind how long it's been since i made this post, anyway i realized that i don't even need to take one apart to get the measurements when i can literally just unfold it and refold it /FACEPALM
so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!
this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together
and then in the end you put it together like this!!
and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy
EVERYONE START GETTING MORE USE OUT OF YOUR SPACE NOW!!!!
i did it for a bit before he noticed. Paul, the single real estate novelist, and John, who got me a drink for free, went by undetected, but there really is no easy way to sneak in Davey, who's still in the navy and probably will be for life
