The 771st Dimension @toru771 - Tumblr Blog

Saturday, June 13, 2026 • 9 p.m. EST: David Shannon, Gina Beck & Simon Bailey (London 2010)

You've most likely heard the phrase "Here goes nothing..." usually spoken before someone tries something that is seemingly impossible, something they are not at all sure is going to succeed, but hoping so very much that it will.

#streams #saturday streams #the phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera #poto

have-you-seen-this-animal

Have you seen the rifleman (Acanthisitta chloris)?

I have now

Yes, in photos/videos

Yes, irl

I'm not sure

Remaining time: 4 days 8 hours

The first photo is of a female, the second is of a male. The Māori word for this species is titipounamu or tītitipounamu (according to Wikipedia. Please feel free to correct me!!).

derinthescarletpescatarian

Foreigners tend to assume that the big cultural confusions between Australians and most other countries are gonna be based on our food, or social services, or weather, or weird animals. But it’s never that. In my experience, the real cultural confusions re: Australians are about The Respect Thing almost one hundred per cent of the time.

deathsmallcaps

? I realize im proving your point but what

derinthescarletpescatarian

The broader Australian culture doesn’t, as a whole, have status-based respect. Some individual groups might, because they’ve brought it from other cultures they’re involved in, but the general culture doesn’t. There’s no sense that your boss or scout leader or the guy in charge of your country deserves more respect than you, or that you should behave differently to them than you would to any random person you know similarly well. (The very rare exceptions include ritualised settings, such as courtrooms, and for some reason the fact that children use “Miss/Ms/Mr” honourifics for teachers at school.)

I don’t mean Australians are a “stick it to the man, fight back against those in power” kind of people – we’re generally not. And I don’t mean we have a “we’re going to do the status thing but pretend we don’t and pretend to all be equal in mixed company” thing that middle-class Americans do. I mean the status-respect system does not exist, and if you try to use it, it weirds people the fuck out at best, and insults them at worst. Treating someone most countries would say is ‘above’ you differently in Australia is basically telling that person that you hate them; it’s saying “I’m forced to interact with you due to our current circumstances but I don’t see you as a person and won’t grant you the basic respect of treating you like an equal”. (When I was in America, I was constantly suppressing the instinct that random service people were sassing me because they overuse honourifics and were so keen to help me.)

This makes interacting with foreigners really baffling in a lot of circumstances. In university, my international friends would often describe Australians as “friendly, but very rude”. They thought we were all arseholes because of the way we spoke to our PhD supervisors and soforth, and wouldn’t believe us when we explained that our behaviour was respectful and that being deferential would be weird and awkward and insulting to them. Learning Japanese had a similar problem; everyone in the class could get the concept of different levels of formality and deference in language, ans was happy to memorise the usage of various words for Japanese people, but using them on each other was super weird, and we’d only ever use the most casual form of anything unless specifically instructed otherwise by the teacher.

The reason I’ve been thinking of this lately is because I’ve recently become aware that a lot of countries have like… a special respect for their country’s leaders? I don’t just mean “yeah, that guy makes the rules”, but that having that office makes them better than everyone else, somehow. Which I expect from countries with royal families, because Tradition, but I’ve recently found that Americans feel this way about their President, too. (Except the current one, who seems to be enough of a dick to break the system.) Like, if six Americans were in an aeroplane that was going down and there was only one parachute and one of the Americans was A Generic Non-Trump President, it’s just assumed that that guy gets the parachute? Like he’s automatically the life worth saving over the others, and they’d just give up their chance in favour of him? And that’s so weird to me. An Australian prime minister would have a 1 in 6 chance at the parachute; however the people decided, “this guy happens to be the leader of the country” wouldn’t be a factor.

When Americans don’t like a President, they usually feel the need to work in how he’s “not my president”, either through sheer denial, or by finding some way he’s theoretically illegitimate (different ways votes are counted, wild conspiracy theories about birth country, etc.), and while making sure those rules are obeyed IS extremely important, I’ve recently noticed that part of the motivation seems to be that they’re invested in whether he’s Really The President because being the President somehow makes someone Special rather than just a normal dick who’s been put in charge of the group project. (You see the same thing in “THIS IS TRUMP’S AMERICA!”, like him becoming President gives him superpowers or something).

This is getting off-topic. Point is, in Australia you can run into the Prime Minister and ask him to help you fix your phone and if he’s not busy but refused to help you out he’d be kind of a dick; of course he should help you out. And if I walk into your restaurant and you act like I’m a movie star and you’re going to be super attentive to my every need because I’m The Customer, I’m gonna get creeped out. We’re suspicious and insulted by what most people in the world consider to be basic manners, and vice versa. And it makes interacting with foreigners super weird because I always feel like they’ve got some invisible heirarchical flowchart in the back of their minds that I don’t.

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys

I have long noticed that Americans have absolutely the same cultural attitude to the President as they would to a serving monarchy. They just think they don’t on a technicality.

drferox

Can confirm that if I call someone ‘Sir/Madam’ I generally mean ‘asshole’ (unless talking to an animal or tiny child) and that if I get called Ma’am I feel like I’m being called the asshole, which made time in Atlanta, Georgia suoer weird.

materassassino

Australians have a very good attitude to respect

onionhighonionandrenown

…so this explains why I have spent the last fourteen years low-grade pissed off at nearly every Australian I meet, because every time I try to be American Polite at them it pisses them off. And, for that matter, why my second boss here, the one I was so careful to be Formally Respectful of and always called “sir,” took such an intense dislike to me.

derinthescarletpescatarian

Yeah, even if that boss understood that you were American and what that meant, their instincts would’ve been screaming at them the whole time that you were being a dick. It’s a difficult thing for us to get used to even when we know the culture is different’.

earhartsease

As a Brit visiting Australia, the most vivid experience I had of this is: in the UK it’s really uncool to get into the passenger seat of a cab - you’re expected to get in the back. In Australia the reverse was apparently true.

derinthescarletpescatarian

… I am only just now realising that inAmerican and British movies and stuff, people don’t get in the passenger seat of a taxi.

whitmerule

covid update: you’re now meant to get in the back seat for social distancing and IT FEELS SO RUDE. sorry taxi person I AM NOT TRYING TO SHUN YOu just I know there are rules and we’re protecting each other. let’s be intensely awkward for a while.

makaeru

Reblogging this because I just remembered the time Molly Meldrum absolutely horrified Prince Charles by describing meeting the Queen as “I saw your mum last week”.

love-lays-bleeding

One of my favorite travel books described humanity as, broadly speaking, having two types of culture: one where formal is respectful and informal is rude, and vice versa. Australian culture sees formality as hostile or unfriendly and familiarity as warmth. It’s decidedly not the case in USA as a whole, though as with any broad category the dichotomy changes as the group gets smaller.

wolverrina

YOU PUT THE THING INTO WORDS!

padeko

Different cultures are fascinating.

searchingcassiopeia

Look there’s honestly a lot of history that build our culture today to be like this. We never really had a true aristocracy or class system in Australia and was still considered the dirty colonies up until federation in 1901. Even when we had the gold rush in the 19th century there were rich people but also anyone could dig up a nugget and get rich so no one really bothered with the rich = better than you thing because old johnno down the road who normally is on the piss all day and lives in a swag just picked up a 2lb piece of gold that’s worth thousands of dollars so now he can go buy his own pub and sell his own beer but everyone will still think of him as that guy who was always cracking bad jokes at the end of the bar and drinking a minimum of 8 beers a day. Sure we have rich people but we also pull them back down to earth when they get hoity toity. Australia is one of the most unionised countries in the world and yeah its true we dont get upset by much but when we do, all hell breaks loose. Look up some of Australia’s biggest protests and union movements like the convict rebellions, Eureka stockade, the campaign for the 8 hour day, and he general history of our Australian Labor Party. Australia was the second country in the world to grant women’s suffrage. So many unions and strikes and demands we made in Australia demanding equal and fair rights to working class in the 19th century that by federation in 1901 we were ahead of the world with workers rights and equality. Really the only class system we had was the employer employee divide but we still never bowed down and took it from them just because they boss. I’m not going to go into what happened in the 20th century but if you’re interested definitely look up post war Australia, the women’s working unions in the middle of the century, definitely look up the late Bob Hawke and his legacy, the nurse’s strike in Victoria in the 80s, the land rights movement and Eddie Mabo, and go from there.

I remember in school we were always taught to treat others how you wanted to be treated. You were no better or worse than anyone else. You want to be treated equal to everyone else and that meant being polite and showing decency and helping each other out. It’s true we only use titles for teachers or elders (indigenous Australians use “Aunty” and “Uncle” as a show of respect to their elders) but outside of that if someone calls you Miss y/n or sir or whatever it’s just uncomfortable. In hospitality and retail some of us will still use sir/ma'am mainly because we don’t know customers names but even then that’s rare and usually applied only to elderly. We personally don’t want to be addressed by titles or even surnames (unless it’s a nickname which I’ll get to) so we don’t use the titles or surnames for other people. With surnames often we use them as a nickname if we dont/can’t shorten their names. Getting a nickname (a good one, not one that is intentionally meant to bully you ofc. E.g. ScoMo is the nickname for our PM but he’s a piece of shit and ScoMo sounds a lot like Scum-mo) is the biggest show of respect in Australia. Usually it’s simply just adding a vowel or changing it up a little. I.e. John = johnno, Darren = Dazza, etc. If we can’t do it to your first name we do it to your last name. If we can’t do it to your last name it’s either a feature or behaviour and we put it in a good light. You ever notice that Australians like to make fun of each other and “insult” each other? There’s a very subtle difference when it’s truly meant to be insulting but that’s our way of being affectionate for each other. We will point out your flaws and make fun of you (and stop if you say no) and we will give you a nickname and it’s all in good humour. It’s one of the things I find foreigners get really upset about because they dont understand why we are so rude to each other. You build up a hard skin in this country and forget hat sometimes that stuff IS a bit insulting.

It’s a very backwards system of respect but it is a very honest one. No one is better than you. No one is worse than you. We are all humans.

silvergryphonart

We treat our acquaintances like friends and our friends like family. Teasing your friends is expected the same way it is for siblings. If you act like someone is above you, in a not-joking way, that’s basically declaring that you don’t see them as potential friend material—that something about them repels you and you want as many barriers between you as possible.

It would hurt my dad so badly if I ever called him “sir.”

confusementation

Yep, and the automatic assumption that you think I’m an idiot/bitch if I’m called ma'am. The only time it has ever happened and I haven’t taken offence has been brand new army recruits/cadets, who are required to use it while in public to show deference to civilians.

I legit take less offense from being referred to as a pigdog cunt than I do being called ma'am. Getting a sweary character reference or having a friend call you a mad cbomb is totally fine in Aus. Ma'am is not something I associate with respect, being included as part of the group, or acceptance in any way - it’s pointing out rather emphatically that you are “other”

alwaysfrowningslightly

This is interesting as hell as an American raised in an Active Duty environment. As a kid I called everyone Ma’am or Sir and I wonder how jarring that child would be in Australia

derinthescarletpescatarian

Whenever I watch an American show and a kid calls their parents ‘sir’ and/or ‘ma'am’ I immediately assume that the intention is to clue the audience in on the fact that that child is being very severely abused. Addressing an elderly neighbour or something like that would be seen as charmingly respectful from a kid, but doing it to all adults would set off alarm bells in the heads of any Australian adult who wasn’t familiar with your past. They’d get it once they learned you were raised around American soldiers though, and expect you to grow out of it.

sleepydumpling

I hate to be the fly in the ointment, but while Australians are generally less formal and stratified than other places, there is a MASSIVE hierarchical attitude just lying under the surface of most Australian culture. Look at almost any corporate workplace and see how shitty management get if someone in an entry level job or thereabouts becomes friends with a person in a higher powered job. My whole career in Australia was spent dealing with bosses who thought I was getting “above myself” by being friends with other management in the organisation, or councillors etc. The number irritated of “Why were you chatting with *high ranking role person at lunch time?” I had to field over the years. Well because they’re a person and I like talking to them. One boss got irate that a recently retired executive manager called by my desk while he was in visiting for a catch up chat. The same person called me one day asking for info/a connection and the same boss got shitty at that too. Yeah you can say hello to the Prime Minister and ask him to hold your beer while you tie your shoelace, he might not mind but there’ll be some bitch nearby who will be FUMING that you got above your station.

contemplatingoutlander

Anti-intellectualism & Spite Cement MAGA's Loyalty to Trump

Below is a (lightly edited) comment to an article in The New York Times about how Trump is destroying clean energy initiatives, and consequently, hurting the country.

The [war against clean energy is the] world's stupidest culture war. Sadly, as far as current American politics goes, the stupid is the point. Of course Trump is repaying oil companies for funding his campaign, and yeah he has a petty reason to hate wind energy, but the biggest problem is that his energy policy isn't costing him votes. Perhaps the Iran war causing a dramatic increase in gas prices is hurting Trump, but his general policy of favouring oil and coal over renewables actually helps him politically. Why? It's as simple as it is awful, and almost no one will talk about it. The real reason MAGA is so loyal to Trump is much greater than any policy. It's even greater than the overt racism. The central principle that ties together all the disparate blocs that comprise the MAGA movement is anti-intellectualism, and the central emotional appeal is spite. [color emphasis added] The main thing Donald Trump learned during his mediocre turn as a student at Wharton is that many, many people were much smarter than him. Some might respond to that realization by working harder at their studies. Trump invented the laughable fiction of his unerring gut that was so superior to the Poindexters' [intellects] he learned to resent and envy and hate. The common thread through MAGA is that same resentment towards people who make them feel inadequate. "The scientists say renewable energy is the future? We'll show them!" Close to half of Americans are people who want to coal roll a Prius with their Dodge Ram turbo diesels. It's the revenge of the stupid. — Rob, Vernon, B.C. The New York Times Comments, May 12, 2026

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov

______________________ Meme sources: 1) Coal roll Prius: Image & quote; 2) Asimov quote: Statue image, quote & original meme

have-you-seen-this-animal

Have you seen the American shrew mole (Neurotrichus gibbsii)?

I have now

Yes, in photos/videos

Yes, irl

I'm not sure

Remaining time: 1 day 8 hours

This is the smallest species of mole.

or-what-you-will

Gaston Leroux Book Club: June 2026

Welcome to our first ever Leroux Book Club book! This month we are starting with one of Leroux's most famous books:

Le Mystère de la chambre jaune // The Mystery of the Yellow Room

Le Mystère de la chambre jaune was first published Sept 7-Nov 30 1907 as a serial in L'Illustration and is the first book in Leroux's Rouletabille mystery series.

It was first published as a novel in 1908 and first translated into english the same year by an unknown translator. It was also translated into english in 2009 by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier with the title: Rouletabille and The Mystery of the Yellow Room.

You can find copies of both the french and english on Project Gutenberg:

French (1908)

English (1908)

wheel-of-fish

Saturday, June 6, 2026 • 9 p.m. EST

Fish's 300th and final stream—STOLLEBOOT

I'm usually pretty decisive about what to stream, but this one eluded me for weeks. How do you cap off 300 nights of shared memories and shenanigans and collective suffering? You can't. Not meaningfully, anyway. What you CAN do is have a party and watch the most ridiculous option possible.

Stolleboot is a brilliantly seamless edit by @cowardtranslation that stars beloved jack of all trades JEREMY STOLLE as the Phantom, JEREMY STOLLE as Raoul, JEREMY STOLLE as Passarino, and JEREMY STOLLE as Piangi.

As always, the stream will be on cy.tube and shy anons are welcome. For more info, please see the Saturday Streams FAQ! Link and password will be posted here at 8:45.

Remember to follow @from-aldebaran for stream posts going forward!

#streams #saturday streams #the phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera #poto

prokopetz

This is 100% me being a crank, but I'm getting real annoyed at seeing Ancient Traditional Crafts™ videos that depict people grinding minerals to make pigments with no respiratory protection. Like, yeah, an N100 mask isn't Authentic and shit, but do you know what powdered mica does to your lungs?

prokopetz

@sawdust-emperor replied:

Watching any green or blue-green mineral being ground to make pigment in these, praying it's just rough glass or some shit and not any of the almost always notably poisonous green minerals:

Being as I've also seen examples where the craftsperson is handling what appears to be raw cinnabar with their bare hands, I wouldn't say the odds are good there.

ajaxgb

have-you-seen-this-animal

I'd really love to see a Stellar's Sea Eagle. They're one of the largest eagle species in the world.

Have you seen the Steller's sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus)?

I have now

Yes, in photos/videos

Yes, irl

I'm not sure

Voting ended onJun 8

or-what-you-will

Gaston Leroux Book Club

So...recently I (sort of accidentally) thrifted a whole pile of Leroux's books that I've been wanting to read for ages, and I thought it would be really cool to share them with people and start a kind of book club!

On the first of each month (starting this June) I'll make a post announcing the book for the month with links to public domain copies and translations into English if they exist. (Please feel free to reblog with links to other languages if you have them!)

Just reblog the month's post (I'll keep it pinned) with your thoughts and and I'll do the same when I'm done! I'm super interested in what everyone thinks, and of course if you have a cool edition or illustrated version, definitely share pics!

I'll see you all on June 1 with the first pick!

wheel-of-fish

Saturday, May 30, 2026 • 9 p.m. EST: Uwe Kröger, Beatrix Reiterer & Lucius Wolter (Essen 2006)

Yeah...we're overdue for a viewing. This performance is wildly entertaining thanks to the unique acting choices of an otherwise very talented performer, and Beatrix is a favorite Christine, and...I'm...you just have to see it. It is best experienced as a group. Also, Grapeman (Bacchus) is there.

As always, the stream will be on cy.tube and shy anons are welcome. For more info, please see the Saturday Streams FAQ! Link and password will be posted here at 8:45.

#streams #saturday streams #the phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera #poto

have-you-seen-this-animal

Picasso bug?

Have you seen the Picasso bug (Sphaerocoris annulus)?

I have now

Yes, in photos/videos

Yes, irl

I'm not sure

Voting ended onJun 3

progressivepower

Trump kneels to “Commies” http://news.usaunify.org/TSfzBD

wheel-of-fish

Saturday, May 23, 2026 • 9 p.m. EST: Jake Lyle, Amy Manford & Jarrod Draper (Sydney Harbour 2026)

LET'S GOOOO

(Also, my stream retirement post is here if you missed it.)

As always, the stream will be on cy.tube and shy anons are welcome. For more info, please see the Saturday Streams FAQ! Link and password will be posted here at 8:45.

#streams #saturday streams #the phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera #poto

homunculus-argument

The whole terf world view becomes coherent and has a consistent interntal logic if you view the whole thing as a conspiracy theory where the founding premise is that straight women do not exist.

have-you-seen-this-animal

Rock flower anemone!

Have you seen the red beaded anemone (Phymanthus crucifer)?

I have now

Yes, in photos/videos

Yes, irl

I'm not sure

Voting ended onMay 25

captain-price-returns

I maintain that this man's entire existence is elaborate performance art to call attention to the elite impunity problem in this country in the most garish way and it's still not working

isuggestguillotine

i have a suggestion

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