This blog stands in full solidarity with the Iranian people as they risk their lives to liberate themselves from a tyrannical regime. Long live Iran, may we see a free Iran in our lifetime.

Just adding to your tags here, i happen to be Venezuelan! and i literally see our fights as one and the same my dictatorship is a big ally of the iranian regime since the 2000s and they help each other in many ways, by supporting the liberation of one of us you are supporting both of us! and anyone that suffers at the hands of the china-russia block along with cuba nicaragua and others, none of us are free till we all are and our oppression depends on each other's to sustain itself is the way i and many other venezuelans also see it so lets gooooo u have a venezuelan pro iranian freedom to ur disposition here whatever you need, keep hope, free iran, free our people!

i would love to hear about people's museum experiences and what have been some of the most impactful pieces of art you've gotten to see in person. i'll go first!

in july 2023, i took the bus up to boston to go to the museum of fine arts, as i hadn't been in many years and wanted to revisit. at the time they were running a special exhibit titled "hear me now: the black potters of old edgefield, south carolina" which i was particularly interested in seeing not only for the art itself, but for how the MFA curated the collection and how they handled artistic and cultural discourse as related to chattel slavery and the labor of the black enslaved artists who created the pots on display.

one artist whose work was featured prominently throughout the exhibit was david drake, known as dave the potter, an enslaved man who made an estimated 40,000 pots over the course of his life, though fewer than three hundred remain today. his work is recognizable for the inscriptions he would include on the vessels—he wrote his name on many, and twenty seven of dave's pots feature verses written and inscribed in the ceramic itself (you can read all the verses here). one of the pots on display at the MFA was the one pictured below:

[Image ID: a photograph of a large ceramic pot inside a glass museum display case. the pot is sitting on a black platform on top of a larger grey-black cube. the cube has the text "I wonder where is all my relation/Friendship to all and every nation" printed on it in yellow-green font. in the background of the image there is a television screen with an image of six black people displayed on it. /.End ID]

the american ceramic society notes that "the inscription appeared several years after an enslaved woman from his household named lydia and her two sons were sent away to louisiana. though unconfirmed, some sources speculate that these people were drake’s family, with lydia being either his wife or sister."

i saw this pot and immediately burst into tears, and still find it hard to even write about the experience of seeing this piece without having an emotional response. it's difficult to name what comes up with seeing this piece—histories of violence, of resilience, of diaspora, of resistance, of love, of blackness are just a few that i'm able to articulate—but i haven't had an experience like that in a museum setting like that before or since.

in an interview with the washington post, dave's great-great-great-great-granddaughter pauline baker said, "i hope the people who view our ancestor’s work see that he was resilient, creative, brave, and tenacious. most of all, i hope they see he was human." i hope that by sharing this piece with you all that you are able to see the same in his work.

this is totally okay to reblog, and please feel free to share in the tags and/or tag me if you share your own stories of seeing art in museums that has particularly moved you!

― Alice Wong, Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

Seeing a lot of posts like "umm why does everyone love bees and hate wasps, bees are bastards and they sting you why are they the only insect anyone actually cares about, why does everyone hate wasps when they're the same as bees"

Well you see, everyone ALSO used to hate bees. Like. You guys are just too young to remember when everyone who wasn't an apiarist or a gardener or an ecologist was militantly aggressive towards bees Because They Sting You. People would burn their hives and kill them all when they were found, not call a bee guy to relocate them, they'd stomp bees in the clover if they saw them. They actively hunted down and destroyed hives.

The reason "everyone loves bees" isnt an arbitrary whimsical choice because they're cuter than wasps. It's because bee lovers made a HUGE effort to encourage people to see bees as valuable pollinators and friendly little guys that just want to defend their hive. They taught people to see bees as cute and fluffy! There were awareness campaigns about the value of bees, there were advertisements, there were little documentaries and articles teaching people how to readjust their views on bees so that the hatred of them didn't cause complete ecological and agricultural collapse.

Bee lovers used to be in the exact same position that everyone who loves other insects is - you say that you like this creature and everyone in a 10km radius comes crawling over to tell you all the ways they personally would kill them.

The fact that it's so common now for people to think bees are cute fun little guys doing an important job is a fucking monumental victory and it was hard won, and it's as recent as in the last 20 years. When I was a kid in the 90s, everyone hated bees except ecologists and bug guys.

If you want this for wasps too (which i also want) you gotta put the work in to change people's perceptions.

True, I remember a kid in my 1991 grade school class even believed bees "steal" pollen from flowers. I also remember lizards, toads, and bats all still being loathed by everyone I met.

On advertising again:

If a company is just advertising the general concept of their company, they don’t need to actually depict the product in a photo or video.

The banners, logos, murals, all of that can be illustrated.

In fact, the MAJORITY of a commercial could be fake. 3D animation, models, AI, etc. Think about the 90’s Gushers commercials. The only thing that truly needs to be real is the final shot of the product.

If Coke doesn’t actually feature a shot of their soda being poured into a cup in their commercial, their whole Christmas ad can be AI generated, because they’re just advertising the company itself. The concept of Coke. But the moment they want to show their actual product, that shot has to be real.

Your coffee shop doesn’t need a real photo of the actual coffee you sell on the sign with the shop’s name out on the street. You can have a cutesy drawing of coffee. The front of your menu can have a drawing by your nice. There’s a lot of room for artistry!

But if you want images of your actual food items on your menu, they can’t be AI, or an illustration, or a 3D model.

You CAN just have a menu without pictures of food by the way, if you can't afford professional photos of your food. Or you can just take the pictures yourself for free. There's a lot of legal options here.

I honestly put a lot more trust in a menu whose photos are not overly charismatic. I can believe that what I see may be what I'm really gonna get.

memes are fun and relatable and all that, but don't let them discourage you. all of that stuff that doesn't make it into the final product is part of how the final product gets made

The end result is supposed to be a concentrated juice full of flavor that is a distillation of everything you did and read up to that point.

Already-existing laws that have been around for decades state the photo or video of a food product must contain the actual food itself. Everything else AROUND the food can be fake, but you must use the real food in the ad. You can alter the food in certain ways to enhance its appearance, but if you’re selling a hamburger, the burger itself must be the actual burger your restaurant sells.

You can use glue instead of milk if you’re selling cereal, but you can’t use glue instead of milk if you’re selling milk. You can’t falsely represent how chunky a soup is by adding extra chunks, but you can put it in a shallow bowl to show off the chunks it normally has. You can spray a burger with glycerin to make it shinier. There’s a lot you can do…as long as the actual food product is in the image.

This means ads of food for sale cannot legally be completely AI generated. I don’t know if this rule applies to other kinds of products, but it’s absolutely a rule for food.

So if you do see ads for food and the product itself in the ad is AI generated, I think you have legal recourse to report it to the FTC and the BBB as false advertisement.

I would like to note, for the record: the large majority of places I have seen AI-generated food in adverts and menus are little immigrant mom-n-pop shops where they don't have the money for a nice photoshoot and don't realize it's illegal.

Use your brain. Your AI crusade is not worth getting someone deported.

Report big chain businesses, not your neighbors.

Yes. Please use common sense, folks!

Different Types of adaptations of written works:

Same names, maybe one or two broad concepts, otherwise it's a completely different story - this can make it easier to enjoy the work as it's own thing, but unfortunately for the original lovers, they won't be getting a faithful adaptation and probably not another for years and years. Makes you wonder why they couldn't just make it a new story (we know it's because of money) Examples*: The Bourne Identity series, Blood & Chocolate, iRobot, Ella Enchanted, I Am Legend, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Princess Diaries, World War Z, Love in the Clouds, Love of the Divine Tree)

It needed to be longer/shorter - making a novel into a movie meant sheering off a lot of interesting side-plots (poor Tom Bombadil and Goldberry!) or lengthening a book into an entire series (The Hobbit trilogy). This can be done well (writer understands how to snip), but more often it's done poorly (lost very important character development and plot)

Cannot stand on it's own two feet - characters actions and motivations are inexplicable unless you've read the original work. World-building is assumed and never explained. You read the original and spend the whole time going "Ohhhh"

Good Enough - but why did they leave out my favourite scene? (Timeline & The Time Traveler's Wife)

Captures the Spirit of the Original - may not be a perfect adaptation, but you really feel like the adapters loved the source material and tried their best to transfer it to another medium (Sense & Sensibility 1995, Warm Bodies)

Bane of your Existence as a Lover of the Original - if it was completely unfaithful it would be better, but if it's faithful enough, you'll spend the rest of your life fighting the incorrect portrayal of a main character (P&P 2005, Shy Boi Darcy) or explaining that the theme is actually completely different (Mansfield Park 1999)

Simplified the Themes Down to Pap - "You are the real monster" Frankenstein 2025

Foe Adaptation - did the creator hate the original work? Is this a complex and expensive revenge on their Gr 11 English teacher? Why did they make this if they dislike the original work so much!

Perfect Adaptation - does this unicorn exist? Captures the themes, vibe, and spirit of the original work while also keeping all your very favourite tiny scenes and characters. Everyone is cast like you imagine and the script is mostly taken straight from the source material.

*I only used examples that I've both watched and read

With rare exceptions, I feel like the changes to the source material tend to land a bit like the purely fictional additions to movies based on historical people and events. A good example is in the series Victoria, where I would've happily watched an entire movie or TV series about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the real-life African princess goddaughter of Queen Victoria, who got a subplot of a single episode, but the multi-episode "downstairs" romance subplot was a yawner. (The Ada Lovelace plot was a little cliché but still interesting, and a well-written series or movie about her would be great, too.)

tl;dr, the real/original material is usually more interesting. Don't even get me started on the original biographical Cheaper by the Dozen vs modern movie adaptations.

it's just so fucked that i can't reach expertize in every single field i've ever been interested in. fml

the entirety of human knowledge is within my reach, and yet i have to pick and choose carefully what i learn, for only a bare fraction of it all can be known to one person within a lifetime. how cruel

idk who needs to hear this, but low engagement does not mean your writing is bad.

engagement doesn’t solely depend on the quality of the work. whilst it can play a role, other things such as fandom, ship, tags, tropes and posting at the right time of the day/week play a SIGNIFICANT role.

so keep writing what you love. keep writing what makes your heart happy. your work is amazing. the fact that you’re even putting words out there is amazing.

do not let numbers define you or your work.

Republicans have regressed to become the tyrants and enemies of the country. MAGA can't govern in a democracy. We need to honor the original text and write a new Constitution.

Hey, remember back when he blew a gasket during his first term over NPR doing their annual reading of the Declaration of independence because he assumed it was about him?

'Cause I remember that.

I saw the best thing on twitter today and no one else is freaking? Ok Can I just pretend this is canon?? Because YES to this headcanon.

Source/art - https://twitter.com/_paul_briggs_

Director at Disney Animation ｡.:*•* ｡. *•*:*｡.:*•* Story Supervisor of Frozen & Big Hero 6* ｡.:*•

Retweet/ https://twitter.com/_paul_briggs_/status/1054825535400898560

Since the story hasn’t been updated and he’s Disney’s animation director, it’s canon

I ACCEPT

Suddenly woke up around 4PM with a vivid idea for a DnD-style fantasy anime, about a generic fantasy hero having to save the world with a representative member of each of the other four major allied races: gnoll, dryad, naga, nurikabe. (No, I don't know why my brain decided on those.) This has been a recurring event through history to repel an ancient evil, but it's been centuries since the last time.

There's a major gulf of cultural understanding because the human kingdom has since moved far from the others, but it's still traditionally the human hero's role to translate. So, the human kingdom's court mage casts a spell on him so he can see them the usual way with one eye, but as humanized versions showing what they seem like to their *own* races with the other; he has to swap around an eye patch to go between them or he gets dizzy from the overlay.

Character descriptions and more worldbuilding under the cut (sorry, they're rambling notes I just hammered out quickly before I forgot anything; no names yet because I thought of it literally hours ago):

Some scene ideas and more worldbuilding:

More under the cut:

I would like to see more people talk about how jobs treat disabled employees.

I used to prep, wash dishes, and cook at mellow mushroom. I had chronic pain that wasn't NEARLY as bad as it is today, but it was still very debilitating. I told my employer "i cannot stand more than 4 to 6 hours. I CANNOT do shifts longer than this due to my illness." And even though i made my boundaries VERY clear, everyday i worked it was 8 hours at the least and 10 or 12 at the most. I would go up to my manager and say "look i really need to leave, my shift is over, my chronic pain is killing me." And he'd say "we really need to here, you HAVE to push through." And so i did, and after one, ONE month of that job my crps got incredibly worse to the point where i could no longer walk my dog around the block which was .5 miles. I quit, and that was FOUR years ago, and ever since that day I HAVE BEEN BEDRIDDEN AND HAVE TO USE A WHEELCHAIR. It is my biggest regret in life.

My best friend who has seen my whole journey has recently developed undiagnosed chronic pain, and she is in the EXACT same scenario i was 4 years ago. Busting her ass at a pizza place with extreme pain that hurts her so much she tells me "im in so much pain i don't even feel like a person." She doesn't feel LUCID. And her manager and coworkers are saying the same thing "if you don't help us you will let us down, we'll be in the shit."

That job thats hurting you isn't fucking worth it. I promise you no money is worth losing all your physical abilities and never getting them back. Your coworkers and boss do not give a shit about you, so don't you dare suffer for them. They will never understand your struggle and they will never try. They truly think being understaffed is worse than whatever pain you experience. They would rather you permanently damage yourself than inconvenience them. FUCK THEM. DON'T FUCKING DO IT!

Trying not to do a disservice to the tragedy that happened today but seeing the counter protesters surround the ICE agents and scream "You can't kill us all, nazis!" while fucking daring them to shoot, well this sums it up quite nicely:

She was a queer mother shot in front of her wife while trying to flee. They were on the way to pick up their son from school. Their dog was in the car.

May that agent never know another moments peace for the rest of his disgusting wasted life.

Just for a source, but please if you are in a delicate headspace I would suggest skipping this for now, it's genuinely devastating.

I live in Minneapolis a short walk (.7 miles, as Nextdoor so helpfully informed me by emailing me an alert of the murder as I was already getting ready to walk down) from where this happened. The neighborhood there is just to the north of where George Floyd was murdered. Renee was new to the Twin Cities but many people on that block likely lived there during 2020, the TC metro area is small and most people do not move away.

The immediate radius of the crime scene becomes a gathering and rallying point. The outer radius becomes a site for increased surveillance and, yes, brutality.

In 2020 protests formed spontaneously, for weeks. People forget that Chauvin was arrested and charged only after the 3rd Precinct burned. What you are seeing in that video is people who have been here before.

Two blocks from my home at about 12:20PM yesterday, ICE was using a parking lot for staging. I and about 30 others stood on the icy sidewalk and on snowbanks and blew our whistles to alert neighbors to their presence and drive them away. I was about 10 feet away from a CBP officer - again, this was the early afternoon, AFTER they murdered Renee Good - when he drew his weapon and pointed it at a Latina woman in her car, trying to get away after being pinned by ICE using their vehicles exactly as they accuse others of using them.

I blew my whistle and flipped him and his buddies off. My whistle gets up to 120db. They fucking hated it. They can barely communicate. My ears are still ringing today and I hope theirs are too.

The point of this is to say: get out there. Police brutality was already bad, this is a meaningful escalation that I fear could be a point of no return. Either federal agents with no legal authority over you can execute you at point blank range, with multiple witnesses and videos showing what happened, or they can't. There is no more egregious restriction of your rights. There is no clearer indication that fascism is here.

Trump's administration called Renee Good a domestic terrorist. One of his agents shot her point blank in the face. Stiff armed, clear eyed.

I can't tell other people what to do but I can describe what I am doing. ICE comes to town in large rentals, mostly with out of state plates. They drive like fucking psychopaths because they are trying to provoke confrontation. If you follow them on the sidewalk with your whistle, they smile like little bitches and drive away.

So.

No one can do everything but everyone can do something. Go and do it.

---

*ICE HAS NO LEGAL AUTHORITY OVER US CITIZENS. THERE IS NO ARGUMENT FOR PROBABLE CAUSE THAT A 37 YEAR OLD WHITE WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN WAVING ICE BY WAS ACTUALLY AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT. This matters. The fact that police have trampled human rights for decades does not mean it doesn't matter when the federal government asserts authority over you that it straight up unambiguously does not have.