These are on a video of a cis man calling out a politician for laughing at a program that gives resources to pregnant trans teenagers. Notice how the commenters all say “men” rather than boys… remind you of anything?
shout out to people who get it but sincerely fuck the rest of you. get over your queerphobia right now. im so tired of it.
protect trans boys who are pregnant. protect trans boys. protect transmasc kids. protect trans kids. protect trans people.
protect intersex trans girls and intersex people with the ability to get pregnant, no matter what external parts they have. i don't care how rare something is. it matters.
I saw the original video and I want to say: I genuinely really appreciate the OP for making it. He is treating the subject with the serious and sincerity it deserves and does a good job explaining what is going on (a lawmaker in the US scoffing and laughing at a resource specifically meant to prevent teen pregnancy is transgender boys). Regardless of the comments, it was genuinely nice to see anybody talking about this, and especially a cis person.
Ainu culture, an indigenous group originating from Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.
The intricate, geometric patterns on their robes are emblematic of Ainu heritage, often created through embroidery or appliqué.
Traditional Ritual: The individuals are captured performing a traditional gesture, possibly part of a ceremony like the iyomante, a ritual aimed at sending spirits back to the kamuy realm.
Historical Context: The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan, traditionally living in harmony with nature as hunter-gatherers, though they faced significant assimilation policies in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In honor of this guy's passing let me once again tell the story of my favorite piece of art ever - Tilted Arc.
Commissioned by the US government in 1979 the work was made up of a 12x120 foot sheet of cor-ten steel which bisected Foley federal plaza in Manhattan. That's it. Just a sheet of metal in a plaza between several government buildings. It doesnt do anything. But it made people So Angry and also made the best argument I've ever seen for the worth of public art.
Foley square is the sqare around which the NY County courthouse, US Court of appeals, and several international ans national seats of law are positioned, which makes it a very important governmental spot in the US. These are the courts that don't send billionaires to jail and rule in class action suits against the prosecution.
The sculpture was installed after a lengthy period during which Serra carefully watched the way people interacted with and moved through the space. His artwork was as much a piece of participatory performance as it was a piece of sculpture, using the general public as part of the piece itself.
Of course everyone fucking hated it.
Because of the way the structure was positioned, lawyers and government employees had to walk around the structure, not only disrupting their habitual path of movement and allowing time for contemplation, but also making them contend directly with the people they were supposed to be working in the best interest of. The sculpture became a site of impromptu games of soccer between neighborhood kids, a makeshift arena for buskers because of the accoustics, and a windbreak under which the homeless could take shelter. It was a sculpture which made one intensely aware of their trajectory in space and thereby the world. While, granted, not as good as the park which had been initially considered (and which is there today) it did function as a living community space in ways it previously had not.
There were multiple hearings at which artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Joan Jonas, and Keith Harring argued in support of keeping the piece. But to no avail. After a protracted legal battle -- during which Serra stated his right to free speech and that the government itself had greenlit the commission and the government argued that the curvature of the piece would cause bomb blasts to ricochet into the courthouse (what?)-- the piece was dismantled in 1989 and is stored in a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn to this day.
Ultimately the commission and subsequent censorship of the piece triggered long running debates over Institution vs. Public, general poor urban planning, public perception of art, and the creation of environments as art which continue to rage within sectors from public policy to architecture to art. It really shifted the discourse and formed the basis of a lot of my own academic inquiry.
Public art should not (and arguably can not) be just pure aesthetic frosting on the cake of life. It needs to activate a space, and, more importantly, activate people within that space. Contemporary art should make you uncomfortable, should make you think, and this piece really speaks to the general societal fear of anything that disrupts our routines or makes us think about our environment too much. It was a wakeup call and a community space and a free speech argument and an example of the stupidity of the US government all wrapped up in one thing and I love it so so so very much.
Anyway, RIP Richard. You made so many people so mad and so many people so happy. Hope you're frolicking in a field of rusty steel monoliths as was your happy place.
The Hobbit movies would have been vastly improved by going the same route as the The Princess Bride movie
Just constant cuts to the future with Frodo chiming in as Bilbo tells the story to be like “that’s not how you told it when I was little!” and “wait, you never mentioned these orcs chasing you!”
And Bilbo hems and haws like “well, I didn’t want to scare the children” etc and we see the same scene get replayed multiple times with slight variations as Frodo and Bilbo bicker about the details of what actually happened
(And then we can do an extra gut-punch at the end where Bilbo tells the little kids “yeah, the dwarves were all fine, nobody died, they recovered from their wounds and went on to rule the kingdom” and maybe we get a glimpse of a universe where that happened… but Bilbo turns away as soon as the children are gone and stared out the window while he relives the truth all over again 😭)
I saw the photo in my feed and went ohh, dude, no, we do not handle yellow rocks with our bare hands until we know for sure what they are. And I know that orange...
In comments, they continue:
and that's where I started cussing at the computer monitor. But someone else had got there first:
So just as a reminder, folks. If you don't know what it is, don't put it in your fucking mouth!
the mantra for pilots is "aviate, navigate, communicate" in that order, meaning "fly the damn plane" first (don't enter an unrecoverable state) and then make sure you're going in the right direction and then talk to air traffic control, basically pay attention to the three things that can get you into trouble in the order of how fast that trouble can arrive.
temporal priority aside though, actually carrying out these objectives requires understanding, the most important currency of any complex activity: flying the plane is largely a mechanical procedure if you understand which angle it's pointing and how fast it's going and what autopilot mode it's in but a hellish nightmare if you don't, navigation and communication are also straightforward if you're keeping track of what's going on, but accidents usually result from the kind of confusion where people don't realise they are confused and are too busy or distracted to stop and notice they've lost touch with reality.
I think about that while driving but also these days while carrying out AI assisted software engineering, which has made understanding what's going on even more important than it used to be; the connection with flight is that it's easy to slip into the mode of developing while distracted and not realise you're doing so, and failures of understanding can take some time to manifest as critical problems.
This reminds me of how calculators can become a problem for some people: you need to know enough math to understand what you’re doing with the calculator, and enough math to understand what it spits out.
Applying the wrong formula won’t magically result in the calculator giving you the right answer.
garbage in, garbage out, or in the words of Charles Babbage:
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Is it stupid that in a way I don't really care what happens after I get my bachelor's degree i just want it as proof that I didnt waste all of my potential as a gifted kid and did nothing with my life. Which is so fucked. Id never feel that way about anyone else in my situation. But for some reason if I don't at least have this under my belt then im a disappointment and should be eaten by shame.
Is it stupid that in a way I don't really care what happens after I get my bachelor's degree i just want it as proof that I didnt waste all of my potential as a gifted kid and did nothing with my life. Which is so fucked. Id never feel that way about anyone else in my situation. But for some reason if I don't at least have this under my belt then im a disappointment and should be eaten by shame.
