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taylor price
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Claire Keane
Peter Solarz
trying on a metaphor
will byers stan first human second
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blake kathryn
ojovivo
oozey mess
One Nice Bug Per Day
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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Kaledo Art
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
@theartofmadeline
wallacepolsom
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seen from Mexico
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@mytheralmin
5 minutes of research on what American troops did in Vietnam will make you understand why people called them baby killers
During the My Lai Massacre, Americans killed over 400 civilians, gang raped children as young as 12, slaughtered livestock, poisoned the wells, burned houses, etc. Total combined punishment of involved military personnel? 3.5 years house arrest.
I don't know how to articulate this well, but I really fucking hate the way a lot of thin writers write fat characters. Like how men write women "breasting boobily" there is something so dehumanizing about how fat characters are often written. "He waddled", "he lumbered", the writer of the book I'm reading always mentions this characters "fleshy hand" when he does something with his hand. Like, we already know that he's fat. There is no need to describe everything he does as "doing it fatly".
*fishes this absolute treasure from the tags*
Martina McBride didn't win Country Music Association Song of the Year for a song about how burning your house down with your abusive husband still inside it is good, noble, and an allegory for the American Revolution for people to act like the genre belongs to bootlicking fucks
other things people didn't do for you to act like country music belongs to bootlicking fucks:
Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia
Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff
Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh
Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time
Kacey Musgraves telling everyone to ignore the haters, smoke weed, and be a bisexual slut
how the hell did I leave Morgan Wade off this list. wrote a song about being depressed, alcoholic, and suicidal and how mental illness stigma sucks, saw how much people connected with it, wrote a Part II of that song about how she's doing better now but you're never totally free of the risk of relapse. fucking icon.
I specifically curated this list so people couldn't be like "ah yes but you see here is my simple binary of good and bad country music which always works", I made sure to add different genders, eras, subgenres, etc and y'all are still pulling that shit in the tags!
listen. Alan Jackson, the archetypal mister big hat man sitting on a tractor singing about a pickup truck, wrote a shockingly normal song about 9/11 that was like "yeah I don't know jack shit about politics but my copy of the bible says we're supposed to love everyone" and then went on the radio and explained how he specifically wanted to write a song about that day that "wasn't vengeful". Miranda Lambert took the southern leftist slogan "y'all means all" and made it the title of a corny ass pop-country song for the Queer Eye soundtrack. Kenny Chesney stole a horse from a cop and Tim McGraw put the cop in a chokehold defending him, and I know that's not about their music but it is, and this is very important, fucking sick as hell
it's fine if you only listen to female country artists or pre-1990 country artists or whatever the fuck you want but stop acting like you've cracked the secret code to dividing a whole genre of art into good pure anti-establishment folk songs vs bad corrupted right-wing sellout pulp
updating this post for 2025:
Luke Combs covering Fast Car and keeping the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" and doing an interview about how he couldn't change a single word because it's not his story. king shit
Morgan Wallen doing I Had Some Help, literally the first song that spoke to me as a male survivor of domestic abuse. also shoutout to the guy for getting caught saying a racial slur and responding by specifically telling his fans not to defend him and raising a bunch of money for the Black Music Action Coalition. bro had an engraved invitation to the culture war and said "nah I'd rather be normal"
Shaboozey just absolutely obliterating the drunk roadhouse anthem glass ceiling
Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne with a song that okay, released in 2019 but I didn't hear until recently, about how good friends mind their own business and let you love whoever you want and also get high with you when you're broke
Kimberley Perry! If I Die Young Part 2!! "actually I'm glad I lived, bitch" ass song that I bet is gonna mean a LOT to kids fighting depression
Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan with Cowboys Cry Too. okay it's shallow and corny but genuinely a shallow and corny song about how men shouldn't be afraid to have feelings is what a lot of men need
bringing the full version of this post back around because people are pissing me off today
Tyler Childers' In Your Love is explicitly about gay men and getting discriminated against.
Martina McBride didn't win Country Music Association Song of the Year for a song about how burning your house down with your abusive husband still inside it is good, noble, and an allegory for the American Revolution for people to act like the genre belongs to bootlicking fucks
other things people didn't do for you to act like country music belongs to bootlicking fucks:
Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia
Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff
Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh
Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time
Kacey Musgraves telling everyone to ignore the haters, smoke weed, and be a bisexual slut
Elite mecha pilot from a gritty, fucked up Real Robot milieu goes up against nth-dimensional alien invaders and promptly gets their ass kicked until discovering quite by chance that shouting the names of your attacks actually makes them more effective against these things.
Don't use AI to write. Use cocaine like a real author.
sight I saw in san francisco, twice: gaggle of tiny children leashed together being herded along, everyone in hi-vis
just had to Castle Doctrine a motherfucker for trying to break into my mind palace
“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot
“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.
"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult
Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.
There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.
Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."
Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.
Thank you for this addition!
I did a report on book banning once.
Actually, I did reports on book banning three separate times with three separate teachers, with three separate sets of parameters so I was able to write about the same topic in different ways, but this is specifically about the report I did in university. The actual specs for the report included that we were supposed to complete some kind of study or poll (this was not a science class). I put the questions out on a couple of forums I belonged to at the time and asked a few IRL friends as well. A lot of the questions were standard for this sort of thing, I think - were you ever assigned to read a banned book, did you ever read banned books on your own, did you read/were you assigned them BECAUSE they were banned or did you find out about them being banned later, what's your opinion on banning books, etc.
But there was one question I asked that ended up reshaping the entire thrust of my presentation: "Are there any books that you think SHOULD be banned, and if so, why?"
Here's the thing. Most of the forums I was posting on were fan spaces for a book series that, at the time, was one of the most banned/challenged books out there. It's a fandom that I have since entirely distanced myself from, that I one hundred percent do not recommend to anyone, that I will actively attempt to dissuade people from reading or talking about, and that I would like to not be popular anymore. I'm sure most of you reading this can guess which one I'm talking about (I won't name it or go into specifics because I don't want to trip any filters unnecessarily). But it was KNOWN that these books were banned in a lot of places. A lot of people wore the "I read banned books" badge with pride. I fully expected that the answer to that question would be a resounding "no" from the forums, and that I'd maybe get a few affirmative answers from one of the other spaces.
I was shocked. Not only did a lot of people come back with either "not exactly but I think we should keep [author] or [book] out of the hands of children" or "yes, [book]/anything by [author] should be banned because XYZPDQ", but not a single person who responded gave me the same answer. The only one I remember - keep in mind it's been almost twenty years - was that one person specifically said The Bone Collector, and for the "why do you think it should be banned" question, they only said, "No. I'm not explaining it. It's too horrible to even think about. Just believe me when I say nobody should ever be allowed to read this book."
I highlighted that last comment in my presentation, along with several other of my "favorite" official reasons for banning books - the Alabama school board that banned The Diary of Anne Frank in 1984 because it was "a real downer", the district that removed A Raisin in the Sun because it was "pornographic", the library that took Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out of circulation because it "might be hurtful to children without parents", and things of that nature - and pointed out that all of these were the same thing. This was somebody saying "I don't like this, therefore nobody should read it, and I shouldn't have to explain why." I also pointed out that if you can't give a good reason, the whole thing falls apart, and then I quoted "Smut" by Tom Lehrer:
All books can be indecent books, Though recent books are bolder, For filth, I'm glad to say, Is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. I can tell you things about Peter Pan And the Wizard of Oz - THERE'S a dirty old man...
Go back to that paragraph I mentioned earlier, about those books that I no longer recommend to anyone. Notice how I phrased that. I don't recommend them. I will tell you all the reasons why I don't think you should buy them. I will tell you all the problems with the author, with the franchise, with the writing. I wish they were out of print, I wish they were deeply unpopular, I wish nobody would ever read them again.
But I still won't advocate for banning them.
It's so easy to twist a justification. Look at what I quoted up there! A Raisin in the Sun was banned for being "pornographic". One of the websites I used as a source responded to that accusation with "Did they read the same play I did?" At the time, I thought the comment was funny. Now, twenty years later, I realize: It was a buzzword. It was a convenient label. At the time of the challenge, just saying "it's pornographic" was enough. Obviously you're not some kind of sicko who wants to hear about all the pornographic details, are you? Freak! That's pornography! And they're teaching it in schools! We should get rid of it!
A Raisin in the Sun, for anyone who didn't study it at any point or read it (or watch the movie, which was very good), is a play/movie about a black family in Chicago in the 1960s. The family matriarch has been in domestic service for years, but she's just received a very large insurance payment from her husband's death and is retiring. Wanting to give her family, especially her young grandson, a better life, she goes out and buys a house...in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. The head of the homeowner's association (essentially) comes to visit them and offers to pay them a substantial amount of money to not move into the neighborhood, because segregation isn't officially a thing and they can't legally stop them from moving in, but they don't want them there. There's a lot more that goes on in the play, and I highly recommend you go and read it, but the point is that there is nothing sexual or titillating in the entire thing. The closest we get is a scene where the daughter (Beneatha, a college student) is gifted a traditional African dress from her boyfriend, who's Nigerian, and he shows her how to put it on over the clothes she's already wearing, and maybe the scene where the daughter-in-law (Ruth, a laundress) accidentally reveals that, having found out she's pregnant, she's planning to have an abortion rather than bring another child into the world/have another mouth to feed.
It's not pornographic. But someone didn't want it taught in schools, so they called it that to get it banned.
It's so easy to twist labels. If you, a liberal, agree that books with X trait are okay to ban, the people who don't want books to exist will find a way to say they have X trait, and then what are you going to do, admit that you like that sort of thing? Sicko! Freak! Pervert!
You don't have to like the book, or the author, or the topic. But if you're advocating for banning them entirely, you're functionally a conservative.
I see we’ve reached the “blame your failures on communist subterfuge” phase of the AI business plan
The AI business plan, for reference:
1. Promise everything.
2. Piss off everyone.
3. Deliver nothing.
4. Blame asians?
Man, I've been hating on ai for free! Where do I sign up for Chinese funding?
Be sure to salute the flag today 🏳️⚧️🫡
Four score and one hundred and twenty-eight weeks ago, my queer ass brought forth on this continent a new gender 🏳️⚧️
Today is not like any other day. Today is a time of reflection and a time of reckoning.
Today I celebrate my Quinndependence Day, and I hope you will, too.
🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡
FIVE YEARS OF QUINNDEPENDENCE
DON’T LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN
AS FANNIE LOU HAMER SAID, “NOBODY’S FREE UNTIL EVERYBODY’S FREE”
PEACE AND LOVE TO YOU ALL
🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
please i need him to die on 4th of july gaudy as fuck 'america 250' celebration that would be the funniest thing ever i wouldn't even bitch about the fireworks. i wouldn't even do that.
"incurious" still GOAT insult. You could be better but you're not. You could learn but you won't, and for no good reason, just a base dispositional apathy. Get fucked
