Three cats and a pug @j0hnsherl0ck - Tumblr Blog

I am absolutely not joking at all when I say that The Sixth Sense should be required as teaching material when you’re trying to get kids to learn about why color matters.

No, the red DOESN’T mean love or violence or passion, however the creators set it up so that in this particular work red means OH NO A SCARY GHOST IS HERE.

When I was in college (as a lit major) I ended up sitting down and talking to a returning student who was having trouble in one of our classes. He liked books, and he had GI bill money so he decided to be a lit major.

He was VERY confused about the “The Curtains Are Blue And It Means Something” approach to symbolism and I remember that he very seriously got out a notebook and a pen, sat down, and asked me “Okay so what to stars mean as a symbol?”

And I was at a loss because of course I was! Stars-as-a-symbol can mean a thousand things and are heavily dependent on context. Are you reading a book about sea travel? Stars mean a map. Are you reading Maus? Stars represent faith and community and the way that the Nazis dehumanized Jewish people. Are you reading something by a romantic author who has a thing for the classics? Stars probably have something to do with heroism and destiny. Are you reading science fiction? Stars are probably just stars but if you’re reading Whipping Star by Frank Herbert they are literally people and our entire conception of stars is reexamined.

So one one the things that I think a lot of people are missing in their high school English classes is that whether the curtains are blue matters or not depends on the work.

The fact that Hamlet is wearing black is an important part of the story and the antagonist commenting on it it is almost the first thing that happens in the play.

What color dress is Lizzy wearing at the first dance in Pride & Prejudice? It doesn’t matter, the curtains are just blue.

And that’s one of those things that it takes a lot of time and a lot of exposure to different kinds of stories to learn and when you’re in high school you just don’t have that experience and your teachers are just now telling you for the first time “sometimes it matters why the curtains are blue” and I know you’re going “okay, sounds fake” but the goal is to get you to look at blue curtains and ask if they do matter, which is why they hand you books with big obvious examples of the kind of shit they’re talking about. You read A Tale of Two Cities because it’s full of binaries and line motifs and it’s the perfect thing to teach a fifteen year old how to look for a motif because there are a shitload of them. You read The Scarlet Letter to look for color symbolism and to ferret out biblical allusions.

“The curtains are just blue” is just “yet another day has gone by and I haven’t needed algebra.” Most people aren’t going to need algebra in their day-to-day lives but it’s handy to know how to do a bit when you need it and it’s good to learn that the concept exists.

If you’re reading books just because they’re fun and you like them then that is cool and I’m glad you’re having a good time and you absolutely do not have to give a fuck about symbolism.

But I am going to laugh my ass off at you if you’re one of those folks who is like “the curtains are just blue it doesn’t matter” and then whines about why scifi and comics and cartoons and video games are all political these days. They were always political, you just couldn’t tell because the curtains were red.

(also because you were socialized to see certain things as apolitical and value neutral but if you’re going “WHY DO THEY PUT SERIOUS MORALS AND SHIT IN A KID’S SHOW, STEPHEN UNIVERSE IS FOR TEN YEAR OLDS IT’S NOT THAT DEEP, LOONEY TUNES WASN’T LIKE THIS” I’m afraid I’m going to have to refer you to all the actual war propaganda made by Disney and Warner Brothers.)

dailyflicks

And now, back again after 18 years, the new adventures of Galaxy Quest!

beardedmrbean

dadpat--tactual-deactivated2022

There’s a documentary on Amazon Prime I’ve yet to watch about how this movie helped revitalize the SciFi genre or something, and I can totally agree with that. It’s more slept on than Megamind or Clue or even Logan Lucky.

beardedmrbean

I think this sums up what it did pretty well

I had originally not wanted to see [Galaxy Quest] because I heard that it was making fun of Star Trek and then Jonathan Frakes rang me up and said “You must not miss this movie! See it on a Saturday night in a full theatre.” And I did and of course I found it was brilliant. Brilliant. No one laughed louder or longer in the cinema than I did, but the idea that the ship was saved and all of our heroes in that movie were saved simply by the fact that there were fans who did understand the scientific principles on which the ship worked was absolutely wonderful. And it was both funny and also touching in that it paid tribute to the dedication of these fans.

— Patrick Stewart

Reminded some of the people making the movies and shows who they were doing it for.

humansoflatecapitalism

𝖜𝖉𝖙𝖍𝖙𝖉𝖜𝖈

luvrly

Never forget that the War on Drugs was fabricated to criminalize certain communities.

flipocrite

The quickest descent into fascism occurs when the criminalization of innocent, nonviolent activities is combined with a surveillance state to “clean up crime”.

(x)

sesiondemadrugada

Les statues meurent aussi (Ghislain Cloquet, Chris Marker & Alain Resnais, 1953).

cucullas

Statues also Die is a good film for those interested in art and museums. Commissioned and partially paid by Présence Africaine it was released in 1953. The film shows how the treatement of African art (called Art Nègre at the time and considered simpler) and Colonialism erased African cultures and denied African and Black people the dignity of their past. It was forbidden as in the ‘50 French still had colonies in Africa, it was allowed on 1963.

You can watch it here in (French with English subtitles) [many scenes of colonial France and an animals suffering dying]

fruitblr

ANDREW GARFIELD as Caravaggio’s “Boy with Fruit” in Simon Schama’s The Power of Art (2006)

dagwolf

In the pages of the New York Review of Books, author Sue Halpern recalled her time in a “remote mountain town” that was large in area but sm

One person who would disagree is Frank Pezzanite, co-founder of Library Systems and Services (LS&S), a company that runs privatized libraries. In his view, “a lot of libraries are atrocious.” For this, he blames not underfunding, but the librarians themselves. “Their policies are all about job security,” he told a reporter. “You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement.” Pezzanite seems to have made it his mission in life to whip these lazy librarians into shape. When his company takes over a library, the librarians who work there—the ones who aren’t laid off outright—become his employees, and he has a message for them: “We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”

LS&S started out as a software company. Now, after doubling in size over the last ten years, it has taken over 17 library systems in five states and runs over eighty branches. Through this growth, and the backing of the private venture firm Argosy Capital Group, it has become the nation’s fifth-largest library system. When LS&S takes over, it receives a set fee from a local government. The corporation gets control over the collection, services, and programs. Most important, it takes over staffing. Librarians at these facilities are no longer public servants; they serve at the pleasure of LS&S. Although it has been building its portfolio since the late 1990s, LS&S has met with little competition; its CEO likes to brag that it boldly goes “where angels fear to tread,” namely, into local fights with committed activists who love their libraries and librarians.

LS&S has developed a pitch that promises innovation, economies of scale, and cost savings. In reality, it hollows out everything that makes a local library a public good. The Maryland-based company’s leadership swaggers like true Silicon Valley disruptors, but those who know the field don’t see it pay much attention to real innovation. The president of the Connecticut Library Association came away from the company’s pitch with the comment that “everything that they’re talking about is standard practice.” An audit of one of its library systems puzzled over the glaring absence of subscription databases and ebook providers, especially given that LS&S, being the fifth-largest library system in America, should be able to get deep volume discounts. The same audit noted, “The absence of a written service plan, staffing plan, technology plan, a contemporary collection development and management plan, and the existence of many dated operational policies, is concerning. Why is this when LS&S has been operating the Library for 10 years?”

Rather than innovate and use its considerable bulk purchasing power to serve local needs, the corporation saves money by narrowing its collection: “They focus on the best sellers and pull the less popular books,” explained a librarian during testimony to the Escondido Library Board of Trustees. “This is at odds with what libraries do.” An independent investigation of the LS&S-run Jackson County, Oregon, library system found that while the county’s Latino population had tripled over a period of 24 years, the Spanish-language collection had grown hardly at all. There were no story times in Spanish, the book giveaway for kids included no Spanish titles, and the website was only in English. All this gave the investigators “the overall impression that Spanish speakers are not considered part of the community nor welcome at the Library.”

One thing LS&S is good at, however, is devaluing its staff. The company was penalized almost $70,000 for “wage and hour” violations by the Department of Labor in 2017. The company co-founder made clear his contempt for the allegedly lazy librarian doing nothing for 35 years, and his company brings this contempt into every contract it secures. The sales pitch made to local governments plays directly to their fiscal anxieties: “Pensions crushed General Motors, and it is crushing the governments in California,” Pezzanite claimed. This is a classic example of burdening public servants for leadership failures, and it’s deeply wrong. In California’s case, governments woefully and knowingly underfunded the pension fund, effectively stealing from their own employees (and it’s funny how no one mentions GM’s executive salaries and golden parachutes, which remained exorbitant even in the face of failure).

muffinlevelchicanery

star-anise

LOCAL MAN MAKES THE WORLD’S STUPIDEST HAT MAKE SENSE

sophia-sol

OH MY GOSH.

for the first few minutes of the video I was like, oh, very nice, that hood looks super cozy and I want one

but then 4:14 was a GAME-CHANGER and I actually gasped out loud

I LEARNED SOMETHING HERE TODAY

j0hnsherl0ck

https://www.youtube.com/c/ModernHistoryTV

fischotterkunst

yall look at this shit ad*be is tryna pull now on ppl who have outdated software:

(note for context: i’m all for piracy, but in this case my copy of CS6 was downloaded years ago when they were giving it away to students. i got it totally legally.)

fischotterkunst

so here is what NOT to do if you’re a loyal fan of adobe who has the cash to shell out for a newer and shittier version of the product you already paid for.

1) DON’T use your search bar to find and open the Run app

2) DON’T type in services.msc

3) DON’T find Adobe Genuine Software Integrity Services and right-click to get a dropdown menu, and don’t select ‘properties’

4) if you happen to click properties, DON’T use the startup type dropdown to locate the option to disable the program. be sure you DON’T click apply to finalize that change.

5) DO NOT do the same thing in order to also disable Adobe Genuine Software Monitor

if you do all of these things, this WILL disable adobe’s ability to monitor the software, and you will be forced to continue using the same older software that you already paid for instead of having to sign up for a newer, shittier version and pay more for it. so if you have lots of cash to spare and are cool with putting it the pockets of racketeering capitalists, definitely don’t do any of these things.

however, you SHOULD reblog this to spread the word, as we certainly want to make sure lots of people know what NOT to do :)

hideousgourd

I’M SORRY MA'AM. I KNOW YOU’RE UPSET.

Pretend to be upset.

dorian-they-ao3

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) • JIMMY STEWART as George Bailey and LIONEL BARRYMORE as Mr. Potter

dorian-they

wait WHAT 😳 i mean that feels accurate but still…. WHAT.

dykecostanza-deactivated2024112

here’s the official fbi memo about it! you can view the whole document here

the fbi presented these “findings” to mccarthy’s house unamerican activities committee (huac) in an attempt to get it’s a wonderful life pulled from theaters but huac decided not to take any action

gdi-fridays

Visit Original Link

It’s time again

arboresqu

“Tunak Tunak Tun” (Punjabi: ਤੁਣਕ ਤੁਣਕ ਤੁਣ) or “Tunak”, is a bhangra/pop love song by Indian artist Daler Mehndi released in 1998. At the time, critics complained that Mehndi’s music was only popular due to his videos that featured beautiful women dancing. Mehndi’s response was to create a video that featured only himself.

also gosh the lyrics to this are actually really sweet & great i never realised

bebeocho

happy tunak tunak tun tuesday

hestia-x

updates to the Navy poisoning one of O’ahu’s largest aquifers:

“We cannot wait any longer. The water resources, it’s precious. It’s irreplaceable. It’s pure. There is no substitute for pure water. And our lives depend upon it.”

x. Hawai’i Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernest Lau

Records show a history of fuel leaks plaguing Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in the past decade, with the most recent leak occurring 11 days

an excerpt from the article:

“The military has offered all service members and civilian employees living near the base the opportunity to get alternative housing, and Converse said they are now covering the cost of hotel rooms for more than 700 people. Converse did not have a timeline for getting drinkable water back to the affected homes. ‘It will involve a series of flushes of not just the water distribution main, but of every home,’ he explained. The Navy added it has seen concerns from people in the affected neighborhoods who were exposed to the contaminated water and reported symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches and skin-related concerns. The Navy isolated the Red Hill well last Sunday and sent samples out for testing Monday, it said.”

while this incident is getting an unsurprising but still infuriating lack of coverage, it should be noted that the tone of all major media coverage is exactly like this: the emphasis for concern is placed entirely on the military&their families, who are receiving help, while the locals have their physical responses to literal poisoning noted.

Hawai’i has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, &nā kānaka māoli have been being told to ration our water for both the military industrial complex&the tourism industry for decades as it is. due to the devastation of our land, the cost of living in the islands is astronomical as it is; food, &now water, is priced to accommodate needing everything shipped across an ocean to the most isolated&heavily populated island on the planet. native Hawaiians already starve in our homeland— currently, they’re being poisoned by our water, one of the only things we have left to call ours after having our resources stolen&continuously depleted.

while the lack of coverage is unsurprising as the military does their best to cover up the hundreds of millions of gallons of petrol they leaked into one of the largest aquifers in the state, the lack of outrage in 2021 is completely untenable— this is not the first fuel leak the Navy has dealt with in Hawai’i. this isn’t even the first fuel leak or containment issue they’ve dealt with this year. more excerpts from the article above:

“Another incident in May [2021] involved the release of more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel from a pipeline inside the storage facility, according to the Navy.”

“In October [2021], the Hawaii Department of Health cited the Navy for violations related to operation and maintenance of the facility, records show. The fines and violations resulted from a routine inspection from September 28, 2020, through October 9, 2020, according to the health department.

the United States military, with a specific emphasis on their Navy, has done damage to our ‘āina that words cannot express, &damage to our people that nothing short of the return of our lands&waters will ever begin to absolve. this fuel leak— hundreds of thousands of gallons of it into one of the biggest aquifers on O’ahu— follows a minimum of eight years of the Board of Water Supply insisting this specific fuel containment set up at Red Hill needed to be either removed or double-walled. this is willful negligence, &the way that they have chosen to handle the fallout by exclusively focusing on those living on their base&in their military housing speaks volumes.

from Sierra Club of Hawai’i:

[ID1: a minimalist grey stone is cracked on a black background above tan sand&blue water. in white above the stone reads: “Shut Down Red Hill”. below this, written in black over the blue portion of the image, reads: “To Protect Our Water. To Protect The People.” /ID1]

[ID2: tan headline reads: “The Latest Update”. below this reads, “Governor Ige and the Department of Health have ordered the Navy to defuel the tanks at Red Hill. While we wish it didn’t take family and pets being poisoned to get Hawai’i’s leaders finally on board with shutting down Red Hill, this is a strong and much needed shift in action that should have happened years ago. The governor and department of health have legal authority to protect us from the Red Hill fuel tanks. But the Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, plans to treat this lawful order as a ‘request’. And now, the Navy is requesting a contested case hearing to delay having to comply with the order.” /ID2]

[ID3: tan headline reads: “What You Can Do”. below this reads: “We need to make sure the Navy does not defy the law while contaminating our water and poisoning thousands of people. Here are 3 things you can do: 1. Write a letter to the secretary of defense Lloyd J. Austin III (Del Toro’s boss) demanding that the Navy comply with the emergency order and immediately shut down Red Hill to protect O’ahu’s water and public health. 2. Make some noise on Twitter! Tweet at Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@secdef) 3. Repost this on your Instagram and Facebook and tag Obama who was raised on Red Hill water and appointed Sec. Austin @barackobama, &a “Hawai’i celebrity” you want to see stand with us on this issue.” /ID3]

the Sierra Club has been working for decades to help with environmental restoration&protection, &is currently integral to keeping the news flowing about what’s happening at Red Hill:

We work to advance climate solutions, act for justice, get outdoors, and protect Hawai‘i’s lands, water, air, and wildlife. With 50 years an

Ola i ka wai a ka ʻōpua.

There is life in the water from the clouds.

Ka lepo ke kumu wai, e huaʻi ana ka lepo kai.

When the source of water is dirty, the dirt is carried to the sea.

what do we do when the dirt cannot be washed out, &when those who sully it refuse to stop? what choice do we have but to fight?

hestia-x

December 10th, 2021:

[ID1: orange slide from Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "Breaking News: Water samples from the Red Hill shaft contained diesel levels 350 TIMES the safe drinking limit" /ID1]

today, a die-in&sign-waving event was held on O'ahu by the O'ahu Water Protectors, demanding that the Red Hill fuel tanks be shut down. today the result of water testing was finally released to the public: diesel levels 350 times the safe drinking limit. any level of diesel in drinking water is poison. on an island, in the middle of an ocean of undrinkable water, this level of contamination can&will mean a death sentence for people if it is not addressed. to be specific: if bottled water becomes a requirement for the island of O'ahu, people-- largely homeless people, many of whom are nā kānaka māoli, homeless in their own homeland-- will die for lack of being able to afford it, &that is before people start dying of the effects of the literal poison that has been in their water. and, as of now, the Secretary of the Navy&all Navy leaders stationed on Hawai'i have yet to agree to the demands of both the public&the Hawai'i state government, insisting that the tanks be defueled&shut down.

the current call to action:

[ID2: slide from Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "Write to the Secretary of Defense Demanding The Navy Shut Down Red Hill" /ID2]

[ID3: caption by Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "Hawai'i's local Navy leaders have failed us. And so has the Secretary of the Navy. His apology doesn't bring back clean water. His apology doesn't ensure our water will be safe in the future. The only way we can move forward from this crisis is to shut down the tanks. We need you, your friends and your fam to write to the Secretary of Defense (Del Toro's boss) and demand the Navy comply with the emergency order and shut down the Red Hill tanks. There is no other option. There is no time left. We need action now." /ID3]

[ID4: screenshot from the Sierra Club of Hawai'i reads: "*Mail your notes by Wednesday, December 14th, 2021. We are aiming to collectively flood their mailboxes so it's better for us all to mail our letters around the same time. *Mailing Address: Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, 1000 Defense Pentagon, Washington DC 20301-1000" /ID4]

ola i ka wai--

water is life.

hestia-x

December 13, 2021:

photos from the die-in that happened on December 10th (via @oahuwaterprotectors on IG), &the dedication of the ko'a by Ka'ohewai at the front of the Navy's command headquarters (via @kanaeokana on IG). the ko'a will be left to sanctify the area for the purposes of prayer to nā akua for the purification of the 'āina&wai of Red Hill until the Navy does what's right&defuels their tanks.

currently, the contaminated aquifer has been shut down. this aquifer, which provides 20% of all fresh water on O'ahu, may never reopen. the Navy, as of now, has refused to defuel their tanks, despite the demands of both the public&the state government. the call to action is still to write to the Secretary of Defense&demand the removal of the Red Hill tanks.

kū'ē. ♡

lackadaisycats

A Wes-wolf…or a Were-Wes? Either way it’ll end badly. (Was a Patreon request)

missalsfromiram-deactivated2020

This cartoon is supposed to be anti-Bernie but it’s actually extremely good

somethingmissingthiswaycomes

The government is supposed to be doing shit for us. Demand it.

itsjsilveira

dispatchesfromtheclasswar

runnin-out-oftime

cooltastrophe

Ok I reblogged this with a long talk in tags recently but this is for all you fuckers in the notes, as a librarian whose library has gone fine-free since the last time I reblogged this post:

YES, going fine-free encourages returns. I can tell you that from my own experience at the check-in desk. In the weeks after we went fine-free, we got SO MANY returns on books that were hella overdue.

YES, library fines disproportionately impact poor people. Here's how it works: you're a single mom who checks out 10 picture books for your kid. For whatever reason, you're unable to return those 10 books on time. In fact, you're unable to return them for a long time. Each of those books hits the maximum fine. In my system, this was $5. When you return the books, you owe $50. If you can pay off the $50, fine. If you can't, then you feel like you're fucked. Maybe you've had a bad experience with owing money before. Maybe you've had a bad experience with an incompetent or bigoted librarian. Either way, you don't feel like you can deal with the cost of returning the books. But eventually the books go into billing, and now you're on the hook for the full price of each book. Even if you return them, you still owe $50. An account with $50 or more in fines/fees is considered delinquent, meaning you can't even use the computer or printing services, let alone check out books. So now you're stuck with these books and these fines and no library access and you're fucked. It doesn't matter how you got here. Rich and poor people alike wind up here. What matters is that for rich people it's not a big deal, and for poor people it's a REALLY big deal.

YES, libraries do everything we can to avoid this situation. We send reminder emails. We offer payment plans. We cap fines at $50. This prevents MANY people from ending up in this situation, but it doesn't prevent EVERYONE from winding up here. Libraries serve a LOT of people!

NO, fine free doesn't look the same everywhere. In my library system, we've eliminated late fines on every type of item, but we still charge replacement fees for books that are very long overdue (60 days I think). The replacement fee is cleared if the book is returned. But if you look at the notes, you'll see other libraries using different fine-free systems. This is because every library is different and has to work within its own context. Which brings me to..

YES, libraries need the money they get from late fines. HOWEVER! Fine free IS possible for every library, if their parent organization chooses to fund it! Libraries are government entities. They exist to provide services, not to make money. The last time I reblogged this post, I didn't believe my library would be able to go fine free for a very long time. Then, we made a proposal to the government we work for to use a special fund to replace what we typically collect in late fines. We were able to go fine free because we got the funding from our parent organization - you know, the guys who collect taxes and fund social services with the taxes they collect (at least in theory).

THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE MEAN WHEN THEY SAY DEFUND THE POLICE.

(That's right motherfucker this was an anti-cop rant all along!)

City and county budgets are finite, but they CAN fund fine-free libraries. The question is always, what funds are going to be used? What might they have funded instead?

When people call to defund the police, it is in part because police are funded by public money. (It's mostly because the police are an inherently oppressive and racist institution, but bear with me here.) The exact same money that arms and empowers police officers is money that could be used for fine-free libraries, fare-free buses, or better supplied classrooms. It's money that could go to health departments or senior centers or parks. NONE OF THESE ENTITIES EXIST TO MAKE MONEY, but some of us have to because we're underfunded by our municipality's budget.

UNDER-FUNDING SOCIAL SERVICES IS A GRIFT. It directly displaces the cost of living in a society from rich people (homeowners and landlords who pay property taxes) onto poor people (the single mom in our thought experiment above, or someone who can't afford a car so they pay but fare, or the kids whose classroom doesn't have pencils).

If you're unhappy with social services where you live, look at your city and county budgets. Find out how much money your local governments have and where it's going. If you want to agitate, agitate. If you want to run for office, run for office. If you want to take direct action, then I would certainly never advocate for anything illegal hahahaha

TL;DR Fine free is great, it's in line with libraries' mission of public service, and it is doable, but only if governments choose to fund it. If they say they can't, look at where their money is coming from and where it's going.

einsatzgroping-deactivated20220

The Tolkien society is mad that someone used an image they have a copyright on because they bought the physical copy and God fuck the Tolkien society so hard.

tophthegoph

Holy shit they made a Tolkien nft

sapokanikan

non-fungible tolkien

vaticanomenon

Anyways. Here’s the full image. It cost me £0

vaticanomenon

Now we have the set. That’ll be £0 each.

sronti

"non-fungible tolkien"

I am dead

kp-ks

Book Burning Memorial

‘In the center of Bebelplatz, a glass window showing rows and rows of empty bookshelves. The memorial commemorates the night in 1933 when 20,000 “anti-German” books were burned here under the instigation of Goebbels. There’s a plaque nearby that says something like “Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end.” ’

queeranarchism

Interesting but rarely mentioned: most of the content burned that night came from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (institute for the science of sex) headed by Magnus Hirschfeld. The institute and Hirshfeld himself were some of the first to openly campaign for the right to have sex with someone of the same gender, the right to transition if you did not identify with your birth sex and for the general acceptance of queer people. The team had already performed the first SRS operations in Germany and in addition, the institute advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s emancipation. Photographs of the night of the book burning are plastered across history books world wide, but the queer movement that was destroyed that night often goes unmentioned.

hallowshorror

reblogging again for that^

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