The best part of bad highly collaborative art like movies is that you get people of wildly varying competency so you get to see talent individuals making interesting creative choices get dragged down as the ship piloted and crewed by buffoons steers directly into an iceberg
The best part of bad highly individualized art like novels is that you get a direct look into the very special brains of some of the oddest and most overconfident people on the planet.
The best part of bad commercial art like video games is that you get to witness a production dumpster fire that by any measure of decency should never have seen the light of day but thanks to sunk cost the biggest chumps in the world still gotta try and sell you on it.
this may be a joke that went fully over my head, but the three mer-people emojis can be any of the apple skin tones. It'll default to whichever you used most recently, but if you hold down on the emoji, you can select another skin tone
realized I wasn't really sure about where a liege fell in a hierarchy (is a liege a lord / other higher-up role who someone serves? or is the liege the person who is doing the serving?) and I'm gonna be honest, Merriam Webster did not make me less confused:
Big "biweekly" energy. You go to look up the term and the dictionary is just like:
I love, love, LOVE it when I can tell a fic author has integrated their specialized knowledge in a fic. I was reading a fic that at some point included the character going to visit an art therapist, and it's so clear that the author is an art therapist themself, and the details included are just immaculate and I love it. I've previously read about a character doing fencing for no other reason than the author clearly wanting to write a sport they understood. A character being given a hyperfixation on bugs just so the author can infodump themselves.
I eat it up every time, it brings such a smile to my face
this wig is boiling me alive. i bet he pops it off at the end of the day like a deodorant cap and i bet it makes a noise. you can't even use taxpayer money on a decent piece when you're on tv bitch? i thought they hated drag storytime. he should switch to cardi's blonde court wig
Shell casings from the slaying of conservative youth leader Charlie Kirk bore anti-fascist and taunting messages, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said
I genuinely thought this was a joke. wow. Alright:
1. notices bulges OWO what's this?
Charlie Kirk's assassin was caught, and according to reports, the casing from the bullet fired at Kirk read, "Notices bulges, OwO What's Thi
2. "hey fascist! catch!" followed by an up arrow symbol, a right arrow, and three down arrows
Eagle 500kg Bomb is a stratagem in the 2024 video game Helldivers II. A powerful singular explosive charged dropped by air support, Eagle 50
3. oh bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao
4. if you read this you are gay lmao
not much to say here, but because I can't help myself, the earliest source online I can find for this is a 2007 forum post where this was written in write text as someones footer / forum signature. which obviously wasn't the first post, but it does feel intensely early 2000s. so like. #vintage
So, first thing first, we are getting this information through a governor who is getting it from the police, and as far as I know, no news sources have been given photo documentation of the bullets in order to confirm the engravings. So everything written on them comes with the disclaimer "according to the police." But for the purposes of this, let's assume the press conference accurately reported what they said.
Initially, the AFT had some internal notes that said the casings showed "transgender and anti-fascist ideology." The Wall Street Journal reported this initially, and has since changed their headline to "Early Bulletin Said Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology; Some Sources Urge Caution," which is a weird way of saying "we did not fact check this in the slightest and parroted straight up misinformation."
WayBackMachine does not have the rest of the earlier version of this article archived, so I unfortunately can't see exactly what it said. It seems like the sequence of events was that a conservative commentator on Twitter (Steven Crowder) and WSJ got this information (that was just meant as internal notes) from someone in the AFT (and possibly that WSJ got it from Crowder). Then, a whole bunch of places ran stories based on it, before higher ups at the Justice Department went to various papers and were like "hold on a sec." And instead of taking down the story, WSJ fully left it up but added a little disclaimer "this might not be true" (hey newspapers, it is your job to fact check, not just to publish random rumors and launder them as credible). And then after the news conference in the YouTube link above, WSJ added this editors note (because god forbid they issue a retraction & send a push notification for that):
Unclear how AFT got it so wrong -- I saw a post that claimed it had something to do with a manufacturer's stamp; however, I think this may just be pure speculation trying to find something that makes sense, because I can't find an official source that identified the manufacturer or showed a picture of the actual casings. Seems like someone just looked at the engravings and were like, "uhhhhhhh, I don't know wtf this means. Must be trans." Who knows the thought process though. "#we are run by clowns" is right
So, "trans ideology"? Definitely not.
Now, "antifascist ideology"?
When I first drafted this, my answer was "sure, if an alien came to earth and the only human language it was exposed to was 4chan and gamer forums." Which just....doesn't sound right. This particular vocabulary of internet trolling is not what I'm seeing in left-wing spaces, even aggressively online left-wing spaces. I do not spend much time in gamer forums, so I'll leave it to someone who does to determine if there are left-leaning folks in those spaces who also share this vocabulary.
I will share that even the engravings Governor Cox feels "speaks for itself," or seem to be explicitly anti-fascist, do also seem able to fit within a right-wing trolling repertoire. "Catch this, fascist" is accompanied by a video game reference linked above. And while Bella Ciao is traditionally an anti-fascist song, it apparently can also be a meme among gamers, and is used ironically among far-right Groypers and shows up on their playlists (source).
I don't really know yet how to interpret this -- this could be a young man who thinks of himself as to the left of Kirk, but who is so heavily steeped in gamer forums and online trolls that it's the only vocabulary he has to express his political beliefs. Or it could be someone more far-right than Kirk, simmered in a political discourse of meme-based hate, trolling, and irony, who thought Kirk was a sell-out or had some other issue with him. This definitely isn't a clear political statement like "deny, defend, depose," and seems more designed to indicate an allegiance to online troll culture above all else, including above any legible mainstream political framework. And part of far-right troll culture specifically is that it's couched in so many layers of irony, appropriation, and plausible deniability that it resists interpretation. I'm going to leave it to someone better versed in this particular set of references than I am to interpret that, and I imagine information will continue to come out.
In the meantime, I feel like we're living in someone's shitty dystopian rpf, my brain is melting, and I am logging off ✌️
Authorities have identified Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah, as the suspect in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Social media users
ooh, I bet I know what happened here! This is one of those times that standardized Yiddish transliteration rules bump up against American English pronunciation rules!
YIVO has set the standardized transliteration system, and once you learn it, it's amazing. There is a Latin-script (ie. English) letter for each Yiddish sound, which usually maps onto one Yiddish letter because Yiddish is wonderfully phonetic. For a few sounds, you have a digraph/two English letters, if English doesn't have a single letter to convey the sound anymore (rip þorn/thorn).
For the non-phonetic words from loshyn koydesh (ie. words with Hebrew and Aramaic etymology) you write it out in transliteration phonetically the way you say it, including the vowels that aren't written out in the Yiddish word.
And then you just pronounce every single letter, the same way you do when reading Yiddish.
It is super phonetic, and once you know it, it makes reading & writing in transliteration a breeze. I've seen it used everywhere from academic contexts to song archives & workshops to texting to haggadahs to play scripts and more. And, it can be great to specify dialect, if someone is transliterating based on a recording or spoken language (have often seen this for songs, many of which are taught in the specific dialect of the person who we have recorded singing it).
And it's very specific! No adding an "h" after a vowel.
So, you get:
And reading "kale", you pronounce each letter: k-AH-l-eh
Unfortunately, no English speakers who don't already speak Yiddish are aware of this extremely effective transliteration system, and it is directly in contradiction with English pronunciation, where:
-e is almost always silent at the end of a word
silent "e" can do a bunch of different things, in this case making a short vowel into a long vowel
ie. instead of pronouncing the e in "kale", it elongates the "a" sound from "kal" ("a" like "ah" / father / אַ) to "kale" ("a" like "ey" / they / ײ )
So, no one was exactly wrong here: the Yiddish folks are writing in correct standardized transliteration, the American readers are reading according to correct English pronunciation rules, and apparently no one took a moment to think about the problem the incompatibility of those two things might pose for a mainstream English-speaking audience.
To be clear, you don't have to be a citizen! All that is required to register is an email address.
As a sidebar, this is a great moment for us to start being aware of including undocumented folks in opportunities & resources, and being clear about access, among other ways of supporting immigrant & undocumented community members.
the way Superboy and The Invisible Girl is Natalie literally begging her parents to see her pain and give her the support and love she needs but both of them dismiss it because in their eyes Diana is doing worse and requires more support
and in I’m Alive when Dan says “it isnt always about your comfort, it’s about helping your mother” and Natalie says “as always” because it has never been about her comfort, it has always been about helping Diana and she has always been left to figure it out on her own
and then in Song of Forgetting when Natalie hugs Dan, initiating contact with someone other than Henry for the first (and i think only) time in the show because she’s in so much pain because her mother forgot who she was and he hugs her back until Diana starts to remember when they met and then he pulls away and once again doesn’t offer her the support she needs because he’s too focused on Diana
and how throughout the show Natalie still acts as her mother’s protector (“that’s bullshit, she trusts you!” right before Didn’t I See This Movie, yelling at her dad when he breaks the music box, and driving her to the hospital during I’m Alive reprise) because she still cares about her so much and wishes she would get better so she can have a good relationship with her
and at the end right after I Am The One reprise when she walks in and Dan starts sobbing and she becomes the one that takes care of him by reassuring him and turning on the lights because she knows that he needs it and she’s so used to putting her own pain on hold
the way Natalie struggles the entire fucking show and it’s always second to her parents’ struggles
With this in mind, it makes "Maybe" hit harder than I've ever seen it before. It could seem like a moment of maximum distance between them, with Natalie saying some pretty intense things:
It's so lovely that you're sharing
No, really, I'm all ears
But where has all this caring been
For sixteen years?
For all those years I'd prayed that you'd go away for good
Half the time afraid that you really would
When I thought you might be dying
I cried for all we'd never be
But there'll be no more crying
Not for me
And what does Diana do at this moment?
She holds her. For the first (and only) time, she takes her daughter in her arms, and holds her to her chest, the way we've seen her hold Gabe so many times already.
And she lets Natalie rage, and cry, and say "there'll be no more crying, not for me" again and again, even as she sobs, and she holds her. She finally holds her daughter through her grief, lets her feel the thing she wishes she could avoid. And in response, Diana tells her "things will get better, you'll see," and ultimately "maybe I'll see you at last."
It's this one brief moment where Diana is her mom, where Natalie gets to be the kid -- gets to rage and cry and say what she's feeling and not worry about taking care of one or another of her parents, and in response gets to be held and reassured. Gets to be Gabe, curled up in her mom's arms, falling into it even as she fights it.
It's beautiful, and devastating, and it stands in such sharp contrast to the entire rest of the show.
And!
In such sharp contrast to how this moment is normally staged -- these image pairs are matched line for line with the original Broadway staging, and well....this staging is different!
and as this section ends, Diana actually kisses Natalie's head
And, this brilliant dramaturgical choice is also staged with both Dan and Gabe on stage. WHAT.
sidebar: it then parallels how Gabe holds onto Dan which is wild work that I haven't fully unpacked
This reversal, from Gabe being the one who is always holding & comforting Diana or being held and comforted by Diana, to Diana holding Natalie and carving a small moment for her daughter to feel the rage and grief that she's never been safe to express because she needed to take care of her mom (and dad), to Gabe holding Dan and carving out a small moment for his dad to feel that rage and grief that he's never been safe to express because he needed to take care of his wife (and daughter)
And this moment has so much weight because it's grounded in the context of the rest of the show, which is all the moments Natalie is forced to suppress her struggles in order to support her parents. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
Here is her piece "Monumental Cloth: The Flag We Should Know" where she worked with The Fabric Workshop to hand dye and weave 101 replicas of this dish towel, including one 10 times the size of the original (brought to 15 by 30 feet), a representation of the size it should have in our public memory:
In "Reversals" she used a commercially-produced Confederate flag dishrag to clean away dirt, sourced from Independence Hall and the Declaration House, to reveal the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that she stenciled into the concrete floor:
She has also made a version of the flag, which was divided in half after surrender, which she has sewn back together. She has used sutures, the material and technique used to repair the human body:
She invites audience members to step into the work, both by standing beside her to unravel Confederate flags, and then to work on looms in the gallery to contribute to the weaving of a new truce flag:
It's work that points out the world we live in now...
...and the one that could be possible:
below the read more is the full post, with image descriptions in place of the images:
Original post: A screenshot, with text at the top saying "the real confederate flag." Underneath is a picture of a plain white waffle-weave dishtowel, a bit yellowed with age or use, with three red stripes at the bottom. The text underneath says: "Dish towel used by R. Lee to surrender to union forces, known as the final flag of the Confederacy" /endID
Sonya Clark made a wonderful series about this:
Image 1: A screenshot, saying: "The flag of truce’s history dates back to April 9, 1864, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee sent forth a rider waving it, putting an end to the long and deadly Civil War. Union General Ulysses S. Grant accepted the Confederacy’s surrender and cut the flag in half so that the rider, who had purchased the repurposed dishtowel just days before in Richmond, Virginia, could ensure safe passage back across Union lines.
The other half of the flag was given to Elizabeth Custer, wife of General George Armstrong Custer, who donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1936.
That’s where Clark first encountered it by chance in 2011, when she was wandering the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. “This is the flag that brought the nation back together, but somehow we still know the Confederate battle flag better than the truce flag,” she told artnet News. “There’s an argument to be made that we’re still embattled as a nation. We still haven’t come to terms with racial justice and equality, with the fact that for all our spouting of democracy, we’re still a nation built on the genocide of Native people and the subjugation of African people.” " /endID
Here is her piece "Monumental Cloth: The Flag We Should Know" where she worked with The Fabric Workshop to hand dye and weave 101 replicas of this dish towel, including one 10 times the size of the original (brought to 15 by 30 feet), a representation of the size it should have in our public memory:
Image 2: Picture shows a white waffle-weave dishtowel, hung on a wooden pole like a flag. The caption says "Sonya Clark, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, Woven replica of the Confederate Flag of Truce, 2019. Hand-woven linen cloth and madder dye. 18.5 x 36 inches (47 x 91.4 cm). Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño." /endID
Image 3: A giant 15x30 foot replica of the cloth, with the picture taken from the side with the tassels and 3 red stripes. In the distance, people are looking at it; they look small in comparison. /end ID
In "Reversals" she used a commercially-produced Confederate flag dishrag to clean away dirt, sourced from Independence Hall and the Declaration House, to reveal the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that she stenciled into the concrete floor:
Image 4: The words "self evident that" are stenciled into a concrete floor. Black hands (belonging to Sonya Clark) are using a wet & dirty confederate flag towel to wipe away dirt. /end ID
She has also made a version of the flag, which was divided in half after surrender, which she has sewn back together. She has used sutures, the material and technique used to repair the human body:
Image 5: Image has heading "5. Monumental cloth, sutured." Underneath are two pictures, one showing another copy of the truce flag, this time with a line of sutures vertically along the midline. The other picture is a close up of the sutures. /endID
Image 6: Screenshot that says: "
Medium: Tea stained, handwoven, linen replica of the Confederate Flag of Truce and silk suture thread
Description: In April 1865, a dishtowel was repurposed as the Confederate Flag of Truce at Appomattox, Virginia. The humble cloth ended the Civil War. It was divided in half and one half divided further. The half at the Smithsonian American History Museum compelled me to make it whole, to make it a monument of peace, an antidote to the recurring symbol of the Confederate Battle flag. This divided country is in desperate need of healing its deeply festered wound. That most people do not recognize the cloth that ended the Civil War, is evidence the war never truly ended. I offer this replica truce flag as a salve to the body of our nation." /endID
She invites audience members to step into the work, both by standing beside her to unravel Confederate flags, and then to work on looms in the gallery to contribute to the weaving of a new truce flag:
Image 7: Two pictures of Sonya Clark, a Black woman, standing next to people, while they un-weave a Confederate flag. In one picture she is standing next to an older Black woman, in another next to a White man of similar age, who she seems to be leaning in to talk to. /endID
Image 8: A young Black person with long box braids sits at a loom, which is woven with white thread. They are smiling. /endID
It's work that points out the world we live in now...
Image 9: A screenshot from an interview, which says: "When Clark and a curatorial team assembled this show in Philadelphia two years ago, they sought out red paint to pop in the exhibition's otherwise neutral palette.
Sonya Clark:
Because the Confederate flag of truce has these three minimal red stripes on it, I said, well that's the color we will use.
Jared Bowen:
The Benjamin Moore sample they inadvertently selected?
Sonya Clark:
Was Confederate red. That paint chip color, Confederate red, lived in between two other paint chip colors. One was called raspberry truffle, and the other was called cherry wine.
In between these two confections is a color that is about insurrection, about enemies of the states, about people who wanted to keep Black and brown people enslaved." /endID
...and the one that could be possible.
Image 10:
Sonya Clark:
My thought was, what would this nation be like if that was the image of the Civil War that had endured, that something was surrendered?
But, instead, we have the Confederate Battle Flag in our consciousness, yes. /endID
Apparently certain NYC elected officials -- such as the city's Comptroller -- are ex officio members of the Board of the Museum, so they get free tickets. So, public office seems like an option.
okay starting with preschoolers (3-5 year olds) they range a lot. i mostly work with nonverbal preschoolers, but i know several who are insanely verbose and use big words. one of them will answer questions in full sentences, the other doesn't even respond to her name.
kindergartners are pretty similar, but they tend to do a lot of vacant stares.
first graders looove attention. if you pay attention to a first grader you're done for. they tend to start developing their personalities to an extent at this point, and are more like little drama queens than anything else.
second graders are complex, strange beasts. they know swear words. they watch horror movies. they stay up until 8. they're real rebels. at this point they get a little meaner. more likely to point out your boogers. they still think burps are funny.
third grade is a bunch of little guys. like at this point they're at the age where they think they're basically adults and have nothing to worry about. baby talking them is a bad idea.
forth grade is 9-10 year olds and trust me, they're so much more mature than you think. they're basically like people. some of them are pretty cool. some are not.
fifth are the snootiest, smuggest little bastards on earth. they understand slurs and use them. do not talk to them.
For 6th graders, here at two instructive incidents:
This school backed up onto a lot of woods, and someone with a bow & arrow had wandered too close to the school. So they had the kids stay inside until they could go tell him "hey you're hobby-ing a little too close to where there are children," and the 6th grade teacher was honest with the kids about why they couldn't go outside for a bit. One of the kids starts making a bit of a dramatic show about "oh my GOOOOOOD we're all gonna DIEEEEE it's like the HUNGER GAMMMESSS." And the teacher just looked at them and said "I told you the truth because I thought you were mature enough to know it. Was I wrong?" Never seen a kid pull their shit together faster.
Two kids were discussing what to do for picture day. Kid 1: "I don't know what to do for picture day. I'm not sure if I should get an undercut or a septum piercing." Kid 2: "Um, neither?" Kid 1: "Why?" Kid 2: [with a withering stare] "because we're twelve"
Asterisk that this does not appear to track all deportations, but ones where there is:
clear political motive / animus, or
a lack/denial of due process
And this is REALLY important to track: disappearing people -- even when courts tell you not to, even when there is no legal basis or process, or just because they were critical of the administration / its priorities -- is a really really bad place to be. This project is tremendously important, and I'm keeping a close eye on it.
However, even when deportations are legal and go through due process, they are still traumatically tearing away a community member. As should be clearer now than ever, just because something is legal does not make it right.
So, while the scope of this project is tremendously important, it's also worth keeping a wider lens in our activism and language that still aligns with decriminalizing and legalizing migration as a whole. We need to dismantle these systems to legally disappear people (ICE / Border Patrol / our whole for-profit system of immigration detention aka prisons) that are now being weaponized to illegally and extrajudicially disappear people.
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