Fuck America

Political Sideblog to voidsembrace

[sawed-on-shotgun]

unfortunate truth of reality is that oftentimes 15 year olds will say/do/believe some stupid bullshit because they are 15 but telling them that they believe that because they are 15 is probably the most counterproductive thing in the entire universe

[glorious-spoon]

While I sort of get the impulse, it does always get my back up when people talk about something like Animorphs with this attitude of 'omgggg remember these books, how on EARTH were we allowed to read these books, they're so grim and dark and violent and tragic, no adults could possibly have known what they actually contained or they'd have been banned.'

And like. Allowing for the fact that there absolutely are adults who think every distressing topic ever should be banned from children's literature - they're children's books. You were allowed to read them when you were a kid because they were written for kids. Bridge to Terabithia is also a children's book. So is Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and The Giver and loads of other books that deal with heavy, difficult topics. It is appropriate and good for children to have books about these things that are tailored to their reading levels and it genuinely really bugs me when people act like they're somehow not really for kids because bad things happen in them or they end tragically.

[plaguedocboi]

So every year, my aquarium does a captive lobster hatchery project (hence all the loblings). The reason we’re doing it is because in the wild, loblings only have a 1 in 25,000 chance of surviving their larval phase. They’re plankton as babies and everything eats them. Additionally, as the Gulf of Maine warms, they are having even lower survival rates because the blooms of copepods they feed on as babies are happening earlier in the year, and they’re missing it.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Conservation is so fucken sick

[penny-anna]

Everyone needs to stop saying death of the author when what they mean is separating the art from the artist. Like FR stop it.

[penny-anna]

I know it's mainly just ignorance of what the term means but I do wonder if this happens in part bcos 'death of the author' sounds so dramatic like oh this author is dead to me, I don't care about them anymore. Whereas 'separating the art from the artist' is a lot more neutral and well. In CERTAIN CASES it is kind of immediately apparent that you cannot.

[penny-anna]

TO REITERATE:

Death of the Author is a term coined by Roland Barthes for his essay of the same name in 1967.

In brief: death of the author is the concept that analysis of a work of art should not be focused on the artist's intent; the artist's intended reading of their own work is just A reading and no more valid than anyone else's.

A good straightforward example of this in practice is the response to Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary. Weir is adamant that his work contains no politics but I would say that PHM is pretty clearly a story about climate change.

You can apply death of the author to any work of fiction and it has nothing to do with whether the author is a good or bad person.

[lullabyes22-blog]

I'm sorry but you absolutely cannot strip Jane Austen's work of Regency politics and social etiquette without the entire narrative collapsing into nonsense.

Modern writers need to stop treating Austen’s world like a generic, pretty fairy tale, and start remembering that her books were actually razor-sharp critiques of a brutal socioeconomic landscape with examinations of class, gender, power and money that are still culturally relevant today.

[not-your-average-url]

I miss when ads were a single click and then they’re gone. Now every ad has a minimum of three phases where you watch a video, exit the still frame of fake gameplay, and then exit the app download. That doesn’t even touch on the ones that forcibly take you to another app after opening a tab in safari without you ever touching the screen.

I hate advertising. I hate that you can’t do anything without companies jumping down your throat with mostly bullshit ads. I hate that billboards exist. I hate that every company unanimously decided to make their ads longer and longer. I hate that ad blockers try to charge you money and there are in app purchases to remove ads. I hate that my attention has become commodified. I hate that there’s nothing I can do about it.

[depsidase]

[hollowboobtheory]

knowing when not to open the comments is a skill

[hollowboobtheory]

internet soft skills

not opening the comments

letting people be wrong

letting people be wrong about YOU

letting people have a bad impression of you (see above)

knowing when your input isn't needed

spotting bot comments

block button

[bewbin]

LETS BRING BACK 1337 SPEAK 

[bewbin]

why do i even try 

[bunney]

I THoUGHT YOU MEANT THE YEAR

[esoanem]

my l0rd, t3h p34s4nt5 4r3 r3v01t1ng! W3 mu5t s411y f0rth 4g41n5t th3m 4thw1th!

[addamatic]

Happy ten years of being so old no one knows what 1337 is

[shop5]

the current administration would totally fall for the Trojan horse. they'd take promo pictures of it on the white house lawn and the president would be on TV talking about how it's made of a big beautiful American lumber or some shit.

[officialfoxsquadron]

audiences have no idea how to be uncomfortable anymore

[officialfoxsquadron]

watch movies that make you uncomfortable read books that make you uncomfortable go to plays that make you uncomfortable watch tv that makes you uncomfortable look at paintings and sculpture and artwork that makes you uncomfortable. it is spiritually and morally and ethically and artistically really really good for you. think about why you are uncomfortable. what biases do you bring to art? what biases does the art bring to you? how do you reconcile this? how does your worldview grow and expand and change? all this and more will be answered and available to you if you just engage with art that does not coddle you and treats you like an intelligent human being that can sit through discomfort

[hannibal-hamlin]

"Wait, you're a Christian? Like, born and raised? Wow, um, you know what American history is like, right? You know the country has only existed for 250 years... Yeah it's fine I'm not like against Christianity or anything but like, you don't support the US or anything, right? The US military is responsible for countless deaths so you support Al Qaeda, right? And the actions on 9/11? Look, I really don't feel comfortable having a Christian in my DnD roleplay group unless you can tell me that you denounce America. No, not the American military, America. What do you mean it's complicated? How can there be hundreds of years of history when America has only existed for 250 years what do you mean? Yeah there's Christians from other countries but they're all connected to America. I went to a bakery the other day and found out they were serving American pastries so I left they need to know that's not okay. I wouldn't hire an American babysitter, how could I when the American military is killing babies, they're complicit and besides I wouldn't want them filling my kid's head with American propaganda. That's why I find it so hard to trust Christians unless I can find out their stance on America. And I can't trust even the 'good' Americans because they obviously support Trump and the military's actions. They live in America and he's the president so obviously they voted for him, if they don't like him then they should show that by leaving. Honestly staying in America just shows me that they're a secret Trump supporter even if they try to lie and say they aren't. Look at my art piece! It's a church burning. Well, obviously it's an American church so it should burn. Look at my patch I put on my battle vest, it's a big X over a cross. No, it's not talking about Christians! It's about America because America uses a lot of cross imagery. Well it's not my fault America co-opted the cross so now I just associate crosses with America, you should recognize that not every cross is about Christianity if someone is defacing a cross you should assume it's because of America. Americans and Christians are all privileged white people anyway."

[jewelkat16]

[octaviaabadassblakee]

I need fat female characters in tv whose weight is inconsequential. It means nothing to the story.

She's fat and gets the guy and no one bats an eye.

She's fat and the hottest chick in the sorority and that's normal.

She's fat and an actress and she gets good roles.

She's fat and she's funny and she has character depth and growth.

She's fat and the main character and no one mentions her weight once.

I'm fat and my weight doesn't play a part in my day to day conversations, or plans, or friendships. Why can't I have that on tv?

[depsidase]

[junkyarded]

so many people post like they are from the dimension of No Misogyny because the misogyny all around them just registers to them as fine and normal

[junkyarded]

we are all posting from the dimension of No Misandry because we live on the planet earth

[allcops]

“The police spend very little of their time dealing with violent criminals—indeed, police sociologists report that only about 10% of the average police officer’s time is devoted to criminal matters of any kind. Most of the remaining 90% is spent dealing with infractions of various administrative codes and regulations: all those rules about how and where one can eat, drink, smoke, sell, sit, walk, and drive. If two people punch each other, or even draw a knife on each other, police are unlikely to get involved. Drive down the street in a car without license plates, on the other hand, and the authorities will show up instantly, threatening all sorts of dire consequences if you don’t do exactly what they tell you. The police, then, are essentially just bureaucrats with weapons. Their main role in society is to bring the threat of physical force—even, death—into situations where it would never have been otherwise invoked, such as the enforcement of civic ordinances about the sale of untaxed cigarettes.”

— An excerpt from Ferguson & the Criminalization of American Life by David Graeber (via actjustly)

[noneedtofearorhope]

since i think many will have had the memory slip with just how many other atrocities have occured in the past 11 years, or are simply too young to remember, the last bit about the sale of untaxed cigarettes isn’t just some hypothetical, it’s a reference to the killing of eric garner

Killing of Eric Garner - Wikipedia

this is the origin of the slogan “i cant breathe”, which was revived in the wake of the killing of george floyd.

[alanshemper]

On this day, 17 July 2014, Eric Garner was murdered by police enforcing a civic ordinance.

[fladurblegon]

“What if poor people abuse the system?”

The system intrinsically abuses poor people.

Hope this helps.

[breninarthur]

"What if poor people abuse the system?"

Rich people abuse the system far more and out of pure greed, not necessity or desperation so idrc about that