cowboyhatesithere:

Settle an argument with me?

How did you learn how to swim?

Formal swim lessons at some point

A friend/family member taught me

I figured it out on my own

I never really learned how to swim strongly

I never learned how to swim at all

Here’s your nuance/bald/whatever button

See Results

ekjohnston:

scrollingdown:

beggars-opera:

I’d still trust you with my life doctor tbh

…this is my new favourite chart

vaspider:

jkefka:

vaspider:

brainscrems:

lizardsfromspace:

lizardsfromspace:

Oh my god Wisconsin’s governor just used a line item veto to secure school funding increases every year through 2425. He struck out a line so it now reads “through the 2023-2425 school year”. He’s allowed to do this lol

Confirmed allowed by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin

ALT

May the school funding empire of Tony Evers reign eternal. Unfathomably powerful blackout poetry entity

ALT

So, it’s clearly good that the schools are funded but like. Is it just me who thinks this is really dangerous that the governor can take a passed law and make blackout poetry with it and have that blackout poetry be the new law of the land??? Like maybe there’s limits on this I don’t understand, but this seems really concerning

That was part of the point of the exercise.

Exactly. The Wisconsin GOP legislature had set things up so that the state’s executive had functionally unlimited power, much like the federal GOP has done. However, the critical miscalculation is that 1) a Democrat won and 2) this Democrat in particular was completely willing to shove their faces in it until they were forced to work with the Dems to diminish the power of the executive for both parties by eliminating the line-item veto. The fact that they still haven’t done that is basically because 1) they thought they could get the court to make it so they had free reign while the Dems didn’t (this failed, seen here) and 2) they think they’ll win again in the near future, which might still happen because Evers isn’t willing to abuse the power to the extent that it actually undercuts the will of the voters.

But yeah, this was a brilliant move on several levels. This is what “strategic” means for a Democratic governor, not whatever vichy collaborationist horseshit Newsom is doing.

@brainscrems

never-quite-buried:

Nope now it’s at the point that i’m shocked that people off tt don’t know what’s going down. I have no reach but i’ll sum it up anyway.

SCOTUS is hearing on the constitutionality of the ban as tiktok and creators are arguing that it is a violation of our first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.

SCOTUS: tiktok bad, big security concern because china bad!

Tiktok lawyers: if china is such a concern why are you singling us out? Why not SHEIN or temu which collect far more information and are less transparent with their users?

SCOTUS (out loud): well you see we don’t like how users are communicating with each other, it’s making them more anti-american and china could disseminate pro china propaganda (get it? They literally said they do not like how we Speak or how we Assemble. Independent journalists reach their audience on tt meaning they have Press they want to suppress)

Tiktok users: this is fucking bullshit i don’t want to lose this community what should we do? We don’t want to go to meta or x because they both lobbied congress to ban tiktok (free market capitalism amirite? Paying off your local congressmen to suppress the competition is totally what the free market is about) but nothing else is like TikTok

A few users: what about xiaohongshu? It’s the Chinese version of tiktok (not quite, douyin is the chinese tiktok but it’s primarily for younger users so xiaohongshu was chosen)

16 hours later:

Tiktok as a community has chosen to collectively migrate TO a chinese owned app that is purely in Chinese out of utter spite and contempt for meta/x and the gov that is backing them.

My fyp is a mix of “i would rather mail memes to my friends than ever return to instagram reels” and “i will xerox my data to xi jinping myself i do not care i share my ss# with 5 other people anyway” and “im just getting ready for my day with my chinese made coffee maker and my Chinese made blowdryer and my chinese made clothing and listening to a podcast on my chinese made phone and get in my car running on chinese manufactured microchips but logging into a chinese social media? Too much for our gov!” etc.

So the government was scared that tiktok was creating a sense of class consciousness and tried to kill it but by doing so they sent us all to xiaohongshu. And now? Oh it’s adorable seeing this gov-manufactured divide be crossed in such a way.

This is adorable and so not what they were expecting. Im sure they were expecting a reluctant return to reels and shorts to fill the void but tiktokers said fuck that, we will forge connections across the world. Who you tell me is my enemy i will make my friend. That’s pretty damn cool.

romdocitizen:

treethymes:

That is why I have left family affairs and raising our children to my wife. She was a colleague when we were at Toei Animation, so she understands my work and how much labor is needed to complete a project. She had wanted to continue to work on her drawings. When we got married, I promised her that we would both have careers. Until our second son was born, I used to take the older one to preschool and meet him there at the end of the day. But when I saw our older son walking home half asleep, I decided that it was impossible for both of us to work.

I still feel contrite about breaking my promise. But since then I have been able to focus on my work.

from Starting Point: 1979-1996

I’ve called The Wind Rises a self-indulgent, self-flagellating film. This is because it is a film in which Miyazaki lays bare his view of his own life work and the demands he placed on his family and employees along the way. Ultimately he accepts it, justifies all of it to himself as well as on everyone else’s behalf.

The above quote tells us about the sacrifices of Miyazaki’s wife and children. As for his employees, in another essay from Starting Point Miyazaki talks about a finish inspector who he worked with on his tv series Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Japan infamously has a culture of overwork, which is especially evident in the animation industry. Of this woman who was getting an average of two hours of sleep per night, Miyazaki writes:

Part of me feels that no one should work that hard. But part of me also wants to have the energy and dedication she has for her work. It would be easy if we were merely trying to produce a quality of work that corresponded to our limited budgets and schedules. But to move forward a single centimeter or even five centimeters beyond that, we need to have the support of people like her. It’s not a case where one person’s job can be shared by two. I need to have someone who understands my intentions and will dedicate himself or herself to the job. And I know this is very egotistical thinking on my part.

Like Miyazaki, Jirō also pours all of his energy into his work. The big difference between the two is that Jirō makes warplanes which will go on to kill many people. Miyazaki of course despises war so I think of his choosing to make a film about an active participant in warfare as an extension of his sense of guilt towards the people in his life (whose sacrifices are the cost of his work).

In the chapter on The Wind Rises in Miyazakiworld, Susan Napier dances around this issue, bringing up several interpretations of the film, ways to reckon with the film’s subject matter: a man who was complicit in contributing to Imperial Japan’s war efforts. But in the end Napier can’t avoid the question at the heart of the film because it is a question Miyazaki explicitly asks himself and the audience: would you rather live in a world with or without the pyramids? Would you rather live in a world with or without Miyazaki movies? And Miyazaki’s answer is “with.” The human sacrifice had to have been worth it for these beautiful monuments, these monuments to beauty.

Because “beauty” is key. On the role of Jirō’s wife Naoko in the film, Napier writes:

One day Naoko simply disappears, walking quietly out of Jirō’s life in order not to burden him or take him away from his important work of designing the Zero. We never see her die.

Toshio Okada has interpreted Naoko’s decision as evidence of Jirō’s fundamental selfishness. “Jirō loves Naoko because she is beautiful, like an airplane,” he says. “Had she gotten old and lost her beauty, their love could not have continued.” Naoko’s offscreen death, he argues, supports the unreal quality of the story. I agree, especially since the real Horikoshi’s wife did not die young, and the couple had two children. The movie’s ethereal Naoko–forever young and forever childless, romantically stained by the trauma of tuberculosis–supports the movie’s otherworldly and fantastic quality, gesturing back to the vanishing-woman motif seen in Castle of Cagliostro.

It’s disturbing to think of a man valuing his wife only for her beauty but there has to be at least some reduction, some flattening of her in his eyes if he is to ask for her life like this (the way Jirō does; the way Miyazaki does). (Also, isn’t it striking how Miyazaki also takes out the two children when he has two children of his own?)

So I think we see glimpses of this “romanticizing” impulse in Miyazaki’s films (when he chooses to indulge it). When young girls like Clarisse in Cagliostro or Fio in Porco Rosso declare their love for the older male protagonist, the men resist, restrain themselves because the girls are too young. But the fantasy is played out nonetheless: the fantasy of a beautiful young girl offering you her life. Or even briefly in Princess Mononoke when the first thing Ashitaka says to San is “You are beautiful” and she jumps back as if he just pierced through to the essence of the humanity inside of her. As if that was the essence of her humanity.

Miyazaki’s movies are very beautiful and embody a lot of love. But it takes more courage to actually love people than to merely fantasize about love, no matter how sensitively observed and rendered your fantasies are. So it is beauty that Miyazaki leans on, depends on, escapes to when he reaches the limits of his empathy. It is beauty that he uses to hedge against his personal selfishness, his own failure to love. The irony of a children’s filmmaker not raising his own children. He seems aware of all of this, but of course self-awareness is no excuse.

The Wind Rises is a portrait of a man with blood on his hands. A man who, for the sake of creating something that could bring some joy to others, monopolized the joy of those around him indefinitely.

As much as I love Miyazaki’s movies, could I live without them? If it meant that his wife could have lived a fuller life; if it meant that he would have shown more affection to his children? Then, yes. Absolutely. No question.

I think of [Isao Takahata] as a Stalinist. -laughs- Miya-san [Hayao Miyazaki] is a bit like a Trotskyist, but for me, they are both men (ojisan) of 1960s Anpo, having very intimidating tendencies. Especially, it’s really something when they intimidate the young staff members. It’s totally different from their everyday smiling nature. They get totally different personalities once they are in a project

In short, in the 1960s way of saying things, if the end is just, the means don’t matter. I think that for them, making a movie is still a kind of extension of the union movement. Making strategy, organizing people, and purging traitors– it’s the same. There are agitation and intimidation characteristics to any popular movement. Basically, it’s a thorough organizing to carry out the top’s will.

I think Studio Ghibli is (like) the Kremlin. -laughs- The real one is long gone, but it’s still sitting in the middle of the field in Higashi Koganei. But in a sense, there is a reason for it’s existence, meaning, I think it plays a certain role by existing. Just like those steel-like athletes could not be produced other than in the communist countries, a certain kind of people can not be produced by the principals of the market economy.

There should be a type of animator who can be fostered only by Ghibli, where the level of staff is really high, from in-between to painting. So, it can be valued in the sense that it cultured (such staff members) purely, but if you ask me if it’s totally right, I’d say I don’t think so. I think they should be disbanded immediately. -laughs- I think it would be more meaningful if those who grew up at Ghibli would go outside.

However, there are things that only Ghibli can do, and if it disappears, the tradition would disappear. But that’s a relative value, and as for an individual value, I think they should be disbanded immediately. It’s the same with the question of whether it got better after the Soviet Union was disbanded, but I think for creative work, anarchy is at least better than freedom under a state power.

It’s like Miya-san is the chairman, and Takahata-san is the head of the party, or the president of the Russian Republic. Producer [Toshio] Suzuki is definitely the chief of KGB. But the things that are made and the reality of the organization which makes them are two totally different things. People who think such cohesion is good flock there.

What do other animators think of Ghibli? As far as I know, they basically respect Ghibli. It’s half love, and half hate. A general response would be: it’s a tremendous place, but I don’t want to go there. Because they control you too tightly (at Ghibli). For example, (they tell you) come in at 10 in the morning and go home at 10 in the evening, and you just keep on working for one or two years. At my place, no one comes in till evening, and no one knows who is doing what. And (the project) ends within 8 to 10 months cause I get bored. This is a more common way (of making animation).

I myself have been invited several times, but the biggest reason why I don’t want to work at Ghibli is because the control is too tight. -laughs- And there aren’t many good food places around Ghibli. I can’t tolerate poor eating. Those two are not interested in eating. One instance shows all, they push their ideology, or rather, their constitution to everybody. (They say) it’s best if you come into the studio in the morning and go home at night, not because they think so, but because they can’t do otherwise.

Well, it’s (like) the military or a (political) party, and for some, it’s a good order, but for some, it’s an intolerable fascism. However, it is certain that only by such mountains of tight control, such movies can be made.

A movie director always has a conflict inside of him, between the need to do what he wants to do and how far he can force others to make sacrifices. Because he can’t do anything without others’ help. Everyone has a different strategy, but I think all these differences come from ideological issues.

Those two aren’t moralists. The lack of ethics is common among men in the 1960s. They definitely think that if there is a validity, or a “just cause” (nishiki no mihata), they are allowed to do anything. In a sense, that’s the thing I most hate about them, and that’s what keeps me from liking them in the end.

For me, it’s better if the end and the means match, though it’s almost impossible. To cope with the reality, they use intimidation and refuting. I trick (staff members), or in nicer words, I try to find common interests (with staff members). I try to accept certain things even if they are against my will, or I try to think I’ll get payback for that sometime later.

Some anime magazines and manga magazines praise Ghibli as the best animation studio in Japan, or in the world, and say such things as it’s the conscience of the Japanese anime industry, but that’s all a lie. -laughs- Anyone who’s been there even once would know that. Well, I’m not going to deny everything (about Ghibli), but if you worship them like that, it will only make people (at Ghibli) miserable. And indeed they are miserable, so I’m hoping they would stop (worshipping them). Someone should criticize them somewhere. Though to do that, you really need forcefulness and resolution.

Apart from Takahata-san, Miya-san has a somewhat shady past. Such aspects also consitutue who Takahtata-san and Miya-san are. You shouldn’t make him a god. Since he is the one who has to carry that burden. I think that’s one of the reasons why he struggled and struggled, and is still struggling today.

-mamoru oshii

atlinmerrick:

kaijutegu:

stsebastiens:

finding out there’s a frankenstein ballet and that it was in october of last year…DEVASTATING

look at this. look at these. im foaming at the mouth

It was stupid good. So good in fact that the bbc filmed a version and put it on dvd when it debuted. I bought that dvd after I saw the show and put it up on the Internet Archive. The audio is not great but the dancing is spectacular. Ever see a pas de deux around an anatomical dissection? You will.

You can download the mp4 file too or just hook your computer to your TV…

clonerightsagenda:

clonerightsagenda:

Spotted the word “blorbo” in The New York Times book review. Listen NYT romance reviewer, I really do not think your paper’s audience is going to recognize that one

ALT

I am not making this up

copperbadge:

jenndoesnotcare:

copperbadge:

siriosa:

baybelletrist:

copperbadge:

National Clean Your Home Month

Welcome to NATIONAL CLEAN YOUR HOME MONTH The Manifesto Our motto: “If you can’t do a great thing, do a something.” What is it? Sam creat

Google Docs

National Clean Your Home Month, aka NaClYoHo or “Salty Pirates” month, is soon to be upon us!

Each November, I “host” NaClYoHo, where participants work to make their living spaces more comfortable and pleasant. The full manifesto is at the link, but the basic premise is that each day in November you put on a podcast, tv show, playlist, or other media, and clean or organize some aspect of your home.

It’s meant to be a low-stress way to both do a yearly cleaning and also participate in an intensive project like National Novel Writing Month without having to write a novel. I’ll be posting about it again before November kicks off, but I thought I’d link to the manifesto well ahead of time, so people could brace themselves. :D

This year my big goals are to figure out how to keep my floors truly clean, replace at least one rug, and clear out the storage nook where I have a bunch of stuff that needs sorting through. I am also going to try to dedicate some time to researching those “bathroom refresh” companies that basically just put a shell over your existing shower/tub/walls and see if it’s feasible for my bathroom, which desperately needs it.

Oh hey we can share the misery. Dunno if I can manage this every day, but maybe? Some days?

*my* home’s gonna take longer than a month. even if i marathon.

I hope it’s okay to respond to this (if not let me know and I’ll delete) because that line of thinking is actually one reason I started this project. The goal of NaClYoHo is not “have a clean home”, which I consider a frustrating and unattainable goal, but to improve one’s living space and increase comfort in it gradually and gently.

You don’t have to completely clean a home or even a room. The ideal practice is, in fact, to ask yourself, what would be one brief thing you could do to make your space more livable? And then do that. Marathon cleaning is actually contrary to the philosophy of NaClYoHo, which is to use external media (a podcast, a TV show, a playlist) to limit the time you spend daily so as to pace out your energy. I rarely spend an hour a day on it, usually closer to twenty minutes. I run the damn thing and I don’t even manage every single day in November, usually.

I hate cleaning. I also have two cats and ADHD. I started this before my diagnosis as a coping mechanism I didn’t understand that I needed. My home is comfortable, not spotless, but over the years this system has helped me install storage, fix holes in walls, clean the bathroom sink and the stove hood at least once a year, buy a vacuum and a trash can, change dead lightbulbs, finish crafting projects, and frame all my posters, among other things.

It’s okay not to be perfect and it’s actually healthy not to spend all your time cleaning or feeling guilty because you aren’t. This is just a fun way to consciously examine what you could improve and take steps to achieve it.

And if that’s not for you that’s okay too. I just want to make sure people don’t misunderstand motivation as masochism. The goal is to make one’s life and mental health better, not worse.

I love this idea so much and I want to give a shout out to three further resources I’ve found very helpful for cleaning and tidying:

Unfuck Your Habitat by Rachel Hoffman - a great how-to book (and website! And. Tumblr!) based on the argument that you deserve to have a space you can live in, and here is how to make that happen even if you’re a spoonie/depressed/allergic to routines. UFYH also gives you clear directions on how to clean specific rooms, and there are printable to-do lists if you’re a millennial who owns a printer (like me) and enjoy ticking off boxes. Also the moving guides are so good!

Real life application: I love the 20-10 and the 45-15 approach to cleaning. I break mine up a little differently, using podcasts or audiobook chapters as my “pause point”. It’s nice to know I don’t have to keep cleaning the whole house. I can just do one room now and then go do something else later. (I rabbit-hole into cleaning really easily so this has saved me from marathoning every other week.)

How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis - this book (and her site, Struggle Care) really dives into the reality of trying to run a household & home while having small kids and being neurodivergent. It gives a really gentle approach and encourages you to chuck out the rule book. It has a lot of practical tips and workarounds for maintaining a nice space without guilt, which I appreciate.

Real life application: Because of this book, I moved my daughter’s clothes into the main hallway cupboard, out of her bedroom. She never uses her own room to get dressed anyway, so she was reluctant about making a whole extra trip, and not wanting to put things away… and now it’s just easier. Of course it’s not “normal” that she wants to get dressed in my room, but if I body double with her to get her dressed, it happens faster and we get to school on time. And I can drink my coffee in bed. Win-win! At some point she’ll take over getting herself dressed, without needing to be body doubled, and we can switch it back.

Organizing Solutions for People With ADHD by Susan C Pinsky - This has been my go-to organizing book for probably the last four or five years. It has a lot of practical tips and advice and will help you set up a household from scratch if you’re moving out. It’s a little dated (I think the landlines and mail signal that — shift to online billing and mobile phones does require a different approach) but the practical advice is off-the-charts good.

Real life application: I no longer have any hidden storage, because I know that if I don’t see something, I won’t remember I have it. This has prevented me from buying things twice (a common ADHD thing). Also, I now put hooks everywhere. And bins. I have so many bins. But there is no trash on desks or tables or on the floor, because there is always a bin right there!

In short, none of these sites/books are going to judge you for not having a perfect home. All of those books have given me so many great ideas for making my home a livable, workable space I enjoy spending time in. I hope they’re helpful and that everyone gets to feel a lot less stress about keeping their home clean and tidy.

Many of these have been discussed in past NaClYoHo events but they’ve never really been collected up anywhere or summarized like this, thank you very much! Reblogging for a resource for all.

sabertoothwalrus:

b00bologist-deactivated20260104:

my wife, upon learning that pubes can be straight: Thats not bush,,, thats just grass

xiranjayzhao:

secretmellowblog:

One super funny thing about the French Rev (that Victor Hugo even references in Les Mis) is the way it altered naming conventions, resulting in tons of WILD amazing ridiculous names!

Basically what happened was— during the French Rev the laws around registering names were relaxed, so people started giving extremely revolutionary names to themselves and their babies.

Sadly Napoleon’s government later cracked down on this. When Napoleon came into power he passed a restrictive law mandating that people had to choose among a list of “normal” names, banning the weird revolution ones, because he was a spineless coward afraid of the power these names had. The restrictive naming laws weren’t repealed until late in the 20th century.

But anyway here are some of my favorite French Rev baby names (taken from this list):

• Mort Aux Aristocrates -“Death to Aristocrats”
• Amour Sacré de la Patrie l’an Trois -“Sacred Love of the Fatherland Year III”
• Lagrenade —“The Grenade”
• Droit de l’Homme Tricolor “Right of Man Tricolor”
• Égalité — “Equality”
• Régénérée Vigueur— “Regenerated Strength”
• Marat, ami du peuple -“Marat, friend of the people”
• Marat, défenseur de la Patrie—“Marat, defender of the Fatherland”
• La Loi-“The Law”
• Philippe Thomas Ve de bon coeur pour la République — “Philippe Thomas ‘Go with a good heart for the Republic’”
• Raison —“Reason”
• Simon Liberté ou la Mort —“Simon “Freedom or Death””
• Citoyen Français—“French Citizen”
• Sans Crainte— “Without Fear”
• Unitée Impérissable— “Imperishable Unity”
• Victoire Fédérative— “Federal Victory”
• Vengeur Constant —“Constant Avenger”

My personal favorites:

Also the Duke d'Orléans, the richest man in France and cousin of Louis XVI, was the one who changed his name to “Philippe Égalité” (Phil Equality). Imagine Elon Musk changing his name to Elon Woke.

arvalis:

Imagining a world where Pokemon and Digimon had swapped monsters.