Update, post-Nov. 6th, 2024: Damn it America. -_-"
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Dear Americans hoping for a Kamala-Tim Waltz win: it's not over yet. Get out the vote.
Also please consider voting all the way up and down the ballot, a bad-faith obstuctionist congress will still ruin your days (and years) even if Harris-Waltz win.
End Trumpism. You've had enough of that nightmare. The World has had enough of that nightmare. No we don't want it to become more Nightmare on Elm Street nor more The Purge.
(To completely skip all the too obvious but also too brain-numbing comparisons to the populist-racist rise, in the past, of a particular Third Reich.)
cartoon self-work from 2017
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...And yeah, even if Trumpism were ended in 2024, there will still be plenty of work left still to do to end nihilism, to end stochastic insurrectionism, to end political White Supremacy, to end corporate-capital capture... and so, so much more. But right now, on the plate, is one pitch to at least maybe possibly end just one scammy play: Trumpism.
They say with all the votes counted & verified as of this moment, there's only like a 6% chance that Harris-Walz will be the winning ticket tonight.
I personally hate hanging onto such a slim chance for hope.
Sucks. /sigh/
I may tag this Tumblr post "#USPol" some day in the future. Maybe next week, or maybe in a couple of months. But not tonight though, no.
Also forevermore: Fuck Trump.
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Addendum: I love the part of Harris' concession speech where she says she "Concedes the election, but I do not Concede the Fight that underlies this campaign."
The fight is not over. If anything it's getting way harder. And this is no time to give up and die. Literally, no. Not the time.
Rebel Moon part II: The Scargiver (a "mini-review")
I am so, so glad that I personally enjoyed "Rebel Moon part II: The Scargiver" a whole lot more than some of the pre-release reviewers would believe (or even perhaps wish) me to. I found myself moved, frankly, by the story. No it's no Tolstoy "War & Peace", but it's no knock-off "Flash Gordon" either.
...And yes you do have to have a "supportive" viewing attitude going in; you need suspension of disbelief (and, perhaps moreso, "suspension of disapproval"). There are premises that are so, so easy to sarcastically criticize in Rebel Moon, but doing so will rob yourself as certainly as going into a Superman movie telling yourself, "humans don't fly & aliens aren't bulletproof".
You get out of it what you put into it. You want to hate Rebel Moon and call it dumb, go ahead hate it. It is a free world. I myself choose not to hate it.
If you ask me (and if you're not asking me then why are you even reading this?), you should go into Rebel Moon telling yourself, "I am going to try, just ever so slightly, not to hate this as I'm going in". I would say there is a good chance you might enjoy it, if you want to, like I did.
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The pushback against Rebel Moon feels very similar to the pushback against Star Wars episodes I through III (the Star Wars prequel trilogy), to me.
...And no I will not be accepting any debates on this topic at this time.
Pro-tip (especially for the chronically online, myself included):
Before unlocking your phone or turning on your laptop, write down:
on a piece of paper,
using a ballpoint-pen or a pencil,
(And yes, these two things are very important) what you want to do on the phone or on the laptop.
…Because believe you me, the moment your laptop is on and/or your phone's home screen is in front of you, you have completely forgotten what you had wanted to do in the first place.
Hey guys, remember the ancient Mesopotamian low-quality copper bamboozler Ea-Nasir? Guess what: he seems to be "back"...
...To be fair though: This particular embezzlement crime actually happened in 2021: [mining.com] Not this year (2024).
(Using a news-link from mining dot com, because the original Bloomberg dot com article is behind a pay-wall.)
Still hillarious though, in my opinion. And the Ea Nasir joke continues to be evergreen. At least among Tumblr deep-lore enthusiasts and fans of ancient world/mediterranean/levant history.
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Some more choice memes I've collected recently, related to Ea Nasir:
A reply, over from Bluesky:
Ea-nāṣir jokes are like high-quality copper ingots.
Not everybody gets them.
Not mine; this next one neither:
Obligatory "Palpatine is back" remix:
The Simpsons predicted this, of course:
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Caught by the captains of the East India Company:
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Randal Munroe/XKCD Comics remembers Ea-Nasir, of course...
The Tumblr merch shop [shop.tumblr.com] has been under maintenance and reconstruction for several months now, but the (current? former?) head of Tumblr merch still has his Tumblr blog up and has a nice quick-briefing of the Ea-Nasir meme on Tumblr....
In 1953, explorer Sir Leonard Woolley discovered and acquired the tablet from what is believed to be the ruins of Ea-Nasir's home while on an expedition to the city of Ur. Several other similar tablets complaining about poor copper quality were also recovered, suggesting Ea-Nasir frequently sent his customers poor-quality goods. The tablet is currently held at the British Museum.
Why does Hanuš the space-spider never call Jakub the Czech cosmonaut, Jakub? And Hanuš instead keeps calling Jakub "skinny man"? I don't protest this about the movie. No, I think I love it.
Also I love how all the dialogue feels translated. As if it's not natively written in English. The post-neo-Soviet vibe, it fits the narrative so well.
In fact I think I'd love watching the movie with Czech audio and English subtitles. I wonder if that's possible... I suppose it's subtle but it would require me hunting for the Czech audio, which I'm 99% sure exists.
I also love the movie's subtext-dialogue about the notions of love, relationship, loneliness, attachment, self-centeredness, touch, beginning & end, cosmology, and so on and so forth.
So much to think about. It's like, I myself had to watch this in a couple of sittings, and I just had to watch it like two, three times to catch what I want to catch out of it...
