Don't Yap About Your Yappy

[needabetternamelater]

Reminder: I am an adult.

[evilsoup]

Let's take like a conceit from a hollywood movie kind of scenario: if there's an emergency and someone shoves a baby into your arms then you are responsible for it, at least until you can safely hand it off to someone else; there is an obligation there imposed on you simply by the situation you are in and your status as a human being, without there being any kind of "guilt" or debt you have to pay off. This is the sense in which there are moral obligations imposed on you by the general state of the world. It's not that you have done something wrong, it doesn't mean that you have to take on guilt for some shit your ancestors or fellow countrymen did. It is because you are a human being in a society which has the material capacity to enable everyone to live a good life, but then systematically prevents this for vast swathes of humanity, that you have an obligation to try to change the situation, proportionate to your capacity to act.

[busket]

I think the male privilege debate would be improved if we had a more solid definition for what male privilege is. male privilege is not just "benefits" that are given to men, because cis men experience what everyone should experience.

male privilege is not like, youre being given a little dessert with your meal. everyone is given a meal, but if youre a cis man, you get to eat it without someone putting sand all over your food. you dont even have to think about the possibility of eating sand, ever! but the woman next to you has spent her whole life trying to pick out edible bites of food and getting grit out of her teeth that she doesnt even think about it anymore. the sand is misogyny, the food is life.

male privilege is when you never have to worry about or be victimized by misogyny, and how relatively easy life is without that weighing on you.

with this definition it becomes apparent that no trans person has male privilege. trans men do face misogyny, both before and after transition, and the hypervigilance is instilled in us forever no matter how well we pass or stealth. obviously i dont need to tell you that trans women experience misogyny; transmisogyny is a particularly violent, cruel and insidious form of it that fucks with you severely.

the patriarchy is rigged towards cisgender heterosexual men only and male privilege is not something that can be gained, because it represents the ideal of how things should be for everyone in a world where no one is victimized by misogyny.

[fierceawakening]

This is… not totally right?

To be clear, I agree with the conclusion that trans men are not meaningfully privileged over trans women, but I think it oversimplifies something a little getting there.

Privilege isn’t just things everybody should have.

Some of it is! Everyone should have certain rights that women didn’t have for much of many countries’ histories and don’t have in some countries now. The right to vote. The right to have any job they want. Those sorts of things.

But there are also things NO ONE should have, but that members of the privileged group are often given. Think about how Pete Hegseth is completely unqualified and many of us know it. Then think of whether a brown guy would have made it through the same confirmation hearings.

Privilege is SOMETIMES not having sand put on your food. But it’s also someone seeing you come to the restaurant and getting out the caviar when everyone else gets a burger.

[ahotknife]

where’s that article by james frankie thomas where he says like “prior to my transition there was only one kind of sex i wanted to have. and i thought i could never have it” because i am about to blow these people’s minds

[ahotknife]

i found it 😌 the article was published on Slate and here’s JF’s commentary on it

[ahotknife]

i have gotten some very odd anons about this post that i’m choosing to ignore. but i am going to double down on this. no i don’t care if girls watch gay porn or imagine themselves as a gay person or wonder what it would be like to have gay sex. so many people imprison themselves by thinking they could never be gay and/or trans. well i’m telling them they better watch out. being gay and/or trans is real. and it could happen to YOU. as a matter of fact i sincerely hope it does

[projectxa3]

from Anarchopuppy

#tbh i think the intense stigma against “straight” ppl “fetishizing” queerness keeps a lot of ppl in the closet

#theres no harm in exploring those feelings in private. indulge in the fantasy and see where it takes u

#dont be a creep to other ppl obv but that goes w/o saying #if id had the courage to confront the ache id feel when i thought abt lesbian sex and how id “never be able to have it” earlier

#it wouldve saved me a lot of time

[needabetternamelater]

[teaboot]

You see I too often sat in school classes and thought “when am I ever going to need this, I’m never going to be an engineer, I’m never gonna be a scientist, I’m never gonna be a linguist” and then I grew up and it turns out a lot of bigots and cults and scams and grifts hinge their entire business model on you just. Not knowing what a protein is or some shit

[myboyrozanovv]

If people knew what a fucking atom is and how molecules are defined, at least a quarter of all health related cults like movements and scams wouldn't work.

"Ohh it's a different sugar than refined sugar" it's the same molecule.

"Ohhh my water filtering apparatus making beauty water and cleaning water and alkaline water" Water is H20. What you're doing is reverse osmosis, and if it's alkaline then there is a substance that's not water in there to make it alkaline. You can't purify water to a pH of 12, because pure water molecules have, by definition of how the pH system works and several phyics rules, a pH of exactly 7.

"Ooohh it has ~different~ sodium atoms." That's called an isotope and sodium isotopes aren't created by magic woowoo, and the magical ability of most isotopes is radioactivity.

"Low toxin" what toxin. Tell me their names. What are they doing. "They are endocrine disruptors" what part of the endocrine system? How? Do you have a source that doesn't try to sell you something?

"Just mix vinegar and baking soda to cleanse all the toxins of your fruits" you just created water molecules and CO2, and some calcium and acetate which don't have much chemical property. That's a science fair vulcano. And doesn't have acidic or alkaline properties to chemically influence anything. Just use tap water at this point. "My wood cutting board soaked in an alkaline solution from baking soda to clear out the toxins leaves a nasty looking soup" yeah because you were dissolving the wood with an alkaline solution. Congratulations.

"There is effective microorganisms in this ceramic bead and it can cleanse your laundry and dishes and prevent mold in your fridge and it works for years" what microorganisms exactly? How did you discover them? What are they eating? Are they resistant to 60 degrees and steam? Do they procreate in the fridge? Are they spreading out on all surfaces to prevent the mold or is it an air filtration system that works without airflow or is it just magic? "Put them in your flowers, they can reverse cavities, put them in your walls" what are they eating in my walls? What kind of microorganisms are they? Did you test the safety of those things in human bodies? Are they native to my biotope? How do they survive in those fucking ceramic beads?

"Just use vinegar it's magic" it's a mild acid. Like, cool, sure, it works for several things, but it doesn't have magic properties. It's just a mild acid. Lemon juice is too. And once again, if you mix it with baking soda, they neutralise each other and you get water. Which cleans a lot of things but you dont need to do *all that* to get your hands on some plain water.

[needabetternamelater]

[rotationalsymmetry]

"The car that ringed the massive, multistranded elevator cable"

Ah. Here is our (normal) car. Got it. An elevator car.

[needabetternamelater]

For what it's worth, that read to a moment to my British eye as a massive car (as in the thing you drive) so big it could ring around the whole lift...inlcuding the doors, cable and everyhting else - the whole kit and kaboodle.

[fierceawakening]

I don’t have ADHD, but this is what happened when I tried to eat anything my body told me to eat.

Sugar and salt trick some bodies.

Maybe not yours. Mine, yes. I can have some, but *I* end up with difficulty stopping.

[needabetternamelater]

On the other hand, I don't have ADHD but I asboutely am on the ASD spectrum... you know what happens if I listen to my body...?...and let..it. eat.only when it wants? ooh, I feel slightly dizzy, I should eat now. No, thank you. I'm pretty sure I should eat before then.

[fierceawakening]

I’m not going to knock “intuitive eating” for someone it’s legit helping.

But I am going to remind people in general that quite a lot of “listen to your intuition” style advice is woo.

If you can’t make sure the person you’re advising isn’t going to do the woo version, don’t advise doing the thing.

[needabetternamelater]

I will also add to people in general..t you know that person at work who you think has absoutley poor judgement? They might well be following their intuition..their intutions may not line up with yours!....now they may or may not be wrong. But maybe consider what you're going to do if you have to interact with this person and it turns out you don't like their intution if they follow your advice before you give it.

[needabetternamelater]

[needabetternamelater]

[needabetternamelater]

[fandomsandfeminism]

Odysseus fucking name dropping the Bronze Age is like Leonardo De Vinci writing in his journal "wow what a beautiful day here in the Italian Renaissance. I sure am pleased to be experiencing The High Renaissance period"

It's just so fucking stupid.

Like.

[pantsmadeofgold]

I hear "this is the end of the information age" constantly when AI is brought up. Is it really the most unbelievable fact that someone would call their own age based on the most used material. Also Homer wrote well into the iron age, bronze weaponry had not been used for like 400 years already. He would have known about the Bronze age collapse. Also the Renaissance is the french term for Rinascita (rebirth in italian) which was in fact used during the Renaissance. It was a term for the age invented by Giorgio Vasari. Like where do you think we got the term from. Check his Wikipedia page. Leonardo De Vinci was just early, but Michelangelo could literally have historically said "wow what a beautiful day here in the Italian Renaissance. I sure am pleased to be experiencing The High Renaissance period" Except you know he didn't speak english so the florentine equivalent of that.

[fandomsandfeminism]

The term "Bronze Age" was first used in 1836.

And while Homer (or, you know, whatever collection of scribes wrote down the Epic Cycle whom we collectively call Homer) may have had a general concept of the Bronze Age Collapse (kind of. Archaic Greeks would know about palace ruins, and may have had a concept that many great civilizations had been lost in the recent past. Theres really only 1 mention of *writing* in the Iliad, and its...pretty amiguous. So its not even super clear is Homer realized that people in the Mycenean period had written language), the character of Odysseus definitely did not.

The homeric Odyssey isn't about the Bronze Age Collapse and its themes do not represent an anxiety about the degeneracy and decline of Greek Culture, and if we are going to assess Nolan's film on the rubric of "are concepts, themes, and terminology something that Homer would have used or recognized", we would be here all day. (Theres not even really an Archaic Greek word for "Veteran" in the same way we do, or in the same way its used in the film. Odysseus, a man still fit for battle, would never apply the term to himself) But I don't think thats a particularly fair way to assess the film.

As for my comparison to De Vinci, who died before Vasaris book- Vasari used the term "rebirth" to describe the shift in art styles, and it wouldn't be used to describe the entire cultural era until the 1850s. So, Michelangelo likely wouldn't have thought he was having a great day in the Italian Renaissance either, honestly. Though he might have felt like his art was part of the artistic revival at the time.

Yes, WE, modern people with modern concepts about history, talk about living in the Information Age. We are very used to dividing up history into discreet eras, often to the point of oversimplification, to compare eras to each other, to try to find cause and effect in our progression from one to the next. It's a concept clearly, Nolan finds very interesting.

It also nearly sent me into a fit in the movie because it's just Nolan breaking the forth wall and saying to the camera "This movie is actually about the decline of the American empire because of the loss of traditional values".

And it's just part of the whole contradiction of the film. The insistence on REAL ancient instruments and Hathaway learning to weave on a REAL ancient loom and pretense of gritty realism, while simultaneously being an incredibly modern American War Guilt movie with inconsistent costume design, name dropping the Bronze Age Collapse. It's clunky and awkward at best.

[pantsmadeofgold]

To start off, i'm a bit sorry. I saw the movie and liked it, then i unfortunately open tumblr and saw a bunch of people who had not watched the movie make the dumbest comments ever. Yours was just the final one i saw. I was stewing a bit when i wrote, now i have taken a nap and feel better. I can also see that you have actually watched the movie.

The movie is written for a modern audience, so it's in english, it uses the term greek instead of a more historically accurate term such as "aegean", bronze age instead of mycenaean period and a incorporates a lot of more contemporary beliefs about greek history. The trojan horse is not mentioned at all in the illiad and only has like 5 lines in the odyssey where it is only described as a siege engine which probably means a siege tower. The trojan horse being a specific ploy by the "greeks" to sneak in is an invention by Virgil in 1st century bc, 300-ish years after Homer. Sinon who was also used in the movie is another one by virgil. The armor is also more roman styled. The theme of odyssey's feeling sad because he broke laws of honor also very roman, romans had a tendencies of calling Odysseus a coward for not fighting head on and using to much trickery. Nolan should just have called the movie Ulysses to be honest. It would have been better.

Here is my opinion i did not like either the original illiad or the odyssey. Why? Everyone is a slave owner and glorified for it. There are like 3 scenes in the original odyssey where a slave comments about how good a master Odysseus is. The specific themes of getting glory and honor in the illiad also does not appeal to my more modern pacifist opinions. So honestly Nolan's version is better than Homer's. We will never have a true adaptation of either though. Unless it becomes morally acceptable within my life time to have a full 10 min rape scene of a minor onscreen we will never have a true adaptation. (which is fine by me). We barely get one scene where Matt Damon nicely ask a man for some supplies while if we were trying to be accurate he should have been pillaging, burning and enslaving that random village. If you truly were hoping for a true adaptation keep dreaming of electric sheep. Lastly i'm not american so it was very interesting to me that you interpreted the movie to be about american imperialism. Here cultural context matters more which is always somewhat fascinating. I understood the film to be more about breaking the social contract both on a national and international level. That we have slowly eroded away the ideas of democracy and human rights too the point where we have returned to the more imperialist idea of "might makes right". Odysseus doesn't take Troy by proper warfare but instead commits a war-crime by disguising himself as the ancient equivalent of a peace offering. The entire Sinon subplot was also about how we send young men to die, while the rich stay at home and drink the country out of house and bed. In the end Odysseus has a revelation, kills all of the bad people and then leaves himself because society can't function when you break Zeus's law.

I can see how it would be a "we kill you and then make a movie about how sad we are" film but that was not really my first interpretation.

[fandomsandfeminism]

A lot of this is perfectly valid and you're allowed to feel how you feel. I've said may times that there's a lot I like in Nolans movie, particularly many of the scenes on Ithaca.

But a few thoughts-

1. If you're put off the homeric texts because everyone owns slaves...Odysseus owns slaves in Nolans movie too.

Eumaeus is literally a slave and Nolans movie keeps all the scenes where he talks about what a good master Odysseus is, specifically in contrast to Melantho snd Melanthius who are bad disloyal slaves and get brutally murdered as punishment.

So....I mean. That's not something Nolan actually...changed at all. If anything, he just doesn't use the actual word "slave" as much so you don't think about it. But Odysseus in Nolan's movie is very much a slave owner too.

2. Yeah, being an American watching an American film by a well known American studio does give some context here. Also having seen Nolans other films. Nolan, without fail, has vague conservative themes and is weird about women, and this film is no exception at all. (Batman and Oppenheimer were particularly on the nose.)

But even if we use your interpretation, the ending is still nihilistic doomerism that basically just says that you have no responsibility to try to FIX societies problems- the next generation can worry about that, I guess. It's Telemachus' problem now.

But yeah, there's some pretty unsubtle subtext in the idea that the light of civilization and literacy will blaze again "in the West" that has....specific political implications here.

As well as some very familiar tropes about a LOT of our post-Vietnam and post- Afghanistan war media- how you went to war, did a war crime, and suffer with the guilt of it. It's why he needs Penelopes forgiveness for his sins at the end (rather than the homeric ending, which centers on Penelopes cleverness and wise nature, establishing them as equals as the final restoration of Odysseus on Ithaca.)

3. I wasn't asking for a line by line Homeric-accurate adaptation (though, Im...curious about what rape of a minor you think would NEED to be included). All adaptations adapt, and I'm generally more interested in how any new adaptation will work with the homeric poem to tell a cohesive and interesting story.

But I do think that a movie which has marketed itself *so hard* on this idea of authenticity and research should be a little more thoughtful about what period in history the movie is...theoretically styled to and how that informs the characters.

But my "This Age of Bronze" critique isn't even a historical accuracy issue so much as a "Why in the World would this thought even occur to this character? Other than to just be a clunky vehicle for Nolans theme statement?"

And the dialogue should be better.

[pantsmadeofgold]

1. Yeah, they just never mention anyone as slaves. Servants or citizens are what they are called. Kinda like medieval placed adaptations calling everyone a peasant instead of peasant or serf. It's a minor change but immediately makes the characters more likeable. Radical opinion (/s) if anyone is a slave owner i don't like them. 2. I understand your opinion more. I agree that the film is not particularly hopeful in total and in some sense his idea can come from a more conservative ideology. I still think he is attempting a criticism of society even though it falls flat in some cases. 3. Did we watch the same marketing? It was literally just big movie stars being named dropped constantly. All the "accuracy to ancient times" i thought was just redditors complaining about skin color. (isn't the rapes of minors the entire setup for the Iliad or have i remembered it wrong. Agamemnon and Achilles raid and take a sex slave each, but Agamemnon's is Chryseis (a minor) who is the daughter of a priest of Apollo so Apollo brings plague and Chryseis is then freed. Agamemnon then takes Achilles' slave Briseis (also a minor) instead this pisses of Achilles so he leaves. Then they start losing against the Trojans so they have to go on a mission to get Achilles back because the took his sex slave away.) 4. You know what. I can recognize that maybe i have just watched to many Nolan films, so his dialogue makes perfect sense to me. Wanting better dialogue is a perfectly fine take.

[fandomsandfeminism]

1. I think that just because they don't say the *word* slave doesn't....change who those characters are. Eumeaus and Melantho are slaves in Odysseus' household. Not saying the word does nothing to change the actual social dynamics being portrayed. (Like, if you redid Gone with the Wind but just never actually called Mammy and Pork slaves...they'd still be slaves, you know?)

2. Over the last few days, I've seen a lot of people try to come at the movie from a more centrist or even left lens. I think...there's ways, especially on how we interpret what "Zeus' Law" represents, which make sense. I think those are valid readings. Is "Zeus' Law" traditional values, or societal institutions? Is it piety or social decorum? But its....clunky. it's clunky regardless. I think the issue is that all the pieces that make this recognizably the Odyssey are...ill fitted for the kind of story Nolan wanted to tell. The bits which can be used to convey his theme (mostly, the reasons behind and conduct during the war) are so outweighed by the bulk of the plot and contradicted by other pieces, that it ends up very muddled.

3. I'm not sure why we are assuming that Chryseis and Briseis are minors. I mean, the concept of a 'minor' didn't exist until very recently historically, but both are typically referred to as 'women'. But, you know, I think the 'captured as a war trophy' thing is probably a bigger issue morally than whether or not they are legally over the modern....age of consent?

But also, again, I wasn't asking for a line accurate adaptation, the Odyssey doesn't include the Iliad, and the Iliad doesn't have smut scenes where this would need to be depicted.

Yes. The characters in the Iliad and the Odyssey do terrible things. Especially by any modern moral standard. Part of engaging with a story that is 3,000 years old is grappling with the fact that customs and culture and morals are different. We are so used to this very Renaissance idea that Hero = Saintly Knight that older stories which depict amoral characters or characters with very different moral structures can read as alien to us.

And I think it's interesting that Nolan wants a story where Odysseus is haunted by his war guilt, haunted by acts of brutality he committed, but....has to change what those acts ARE - burning a city and killing civilians (a Relatable war crime, something that all the Vietnam and Afghanistan vets can relate to), but not murdering Hectors infant son, or taking 'war trophies' of his own (many sources say he takes Hecuba, queen of Troy), or owning slaves back home, or killing all the slave girls who slept with the suitors to cleanse his household. Nolan wants to add in modern guilt, but then has to also make sure that the things he's guilty about are Relatable. Which is...a little boring, but mostly just very clunky.

But yes the marketing did make a big deal about authenticity. Doing it for real. Having the practical effects. Using the ancient instruments. The ancient loom. It's all impressively authentic when it was convenient, but then we have Agamenmons Batman armor and Odysseus' viking ship when it suits. Which, I dunno, commit. Put Odysseus on a space ship, lost in the Kuiper Belt, fighting one eyed space aliens if you are having fun with it. But 'oh we reconstructed an ancient lyre within the score, while Meneleus has *fire dancers* at his daughter's wedding feast' is really just having your cake and eating it too.

[alarmist-nonsense]

[chillgamesh-the-swing]

direct link to the article

link to the original study

Basically, increased co2 concentration in the air makes plants make more carbohydrates, but not take in more nutrients from the soil, so they grow faster but have a lower density of vitamins and minerals. Plus, they're "breathing" more efficiently and actually using slightly less water, so they're taking in even fewer nutrients. And the faster growth can't make up for the rates of damage due to climate instability (droughts, floods, extreme heat etc).

The research shows approximately a 3% drop in nutrient density since the 1980s, particularly in carbohydrate heavy crops (like most starchy staple foods), but so many people around the globe depend on those crops for over half their diet that it's very easy for them to fall into malnutrition without access to more expensive shit like enriched products, supplements, and even just fruits and vegetables. Like all the effects of the climate crisis, this impacts those least responsible first.

[needabetternamelater]

[asteroidtroglodyte]

You can’t Abstain your way to a Better World.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

The Burger still gets made, even if you go Vegan. If you don’t buy it, it just winds up in the trash. If you want to do something meaningful about waste, you need legislation: It must become a crime to waste food in those ways.

If you care about Animal Cruelty in Factory Farms, you need to get legislation passed. It must become a crime to mistreat animals in those ways, and when malfeasances occurs, the onus of responsibility for those crimes must fall upon wealthy shoulders. That, also, requires legislation. It requires regulations, and regulators.

The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.

You need Government.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

STOP PROPOSING INDIVIDUAL SOLUTIONS TO COLLECTIVE PROBLEMS

[fierceawakening]

I don’t have ADHD, but this is what happened when I tried to eat anything my body told me to eat.

Sugar and salt trick some bodies.

Maybe not yours. Mine, yes. I can have some, but *I* end up with difficulty stopping.

[needabetternamelater]

On the other hand, I don't have ADHD but I asboutely am on the ASD spectrum... you know what happens if I listen to my body...?...and let..it. eat.only when it wants? ooh, I feel slightly dizzy, I should eat now. No, thank you. I'm pretty sure I should eat before then.