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China really did hit us with a cultural revolution by doing literally nothing. Seeing regular people from two geopolitical rivals do something as unprecedented as simply talk to each other is one of the few things giving me hope right now.

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Kendrick: America is built off of the backs of slaves whose descendants, who were promised freedom and reparations they never got, are now being told that they're not good enough for this country. We're told that we're too black, we're too ghetto, we make everything too political. The elite like to watch us fight amongst ourselves because that way they'll be safe from the consequences of their actions.

Y'all: HAHA wow, Kendrick played Not Like Us!!! Everyone called Drake a pedophile!!! Kendrick is such a hater about This One Guy and This One Guy Only, this is a single instance after all, that's so funny. Anyway (proceeds to never interact with anything else he makes ever again)

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A Crash Course to Kendrick's Super Bowl Performance, from a Black Woman

Note: this does NOT go in depth into all of the song's lyrics. I don't have time to recount two decades of his discography. This is just a summary of the performance itself.

Let's start with the first visual we get:

UNCLE SAM - most notably recognized from WWII American wartime propaganda, Uncle Sam is the personification of American patriotism and freedom. The term "uncle" is also evocative of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist book that aided in inciting the Civil War. Uncle is also a very common term (both endearment and derogatory) towards Black men (eg. "unc"). Samuel L Jackson was fantastic.

Uncle Sam also resembles a circus ringleader, notable for my next point:

THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME - no, not Super Bowl. The GAG is us the people being pitted against each other: through late-stage capitalism, through the culture war, through class warfare, through being built of the backs of slaves. We are all players in the GAG because none of us on this site were the oligarchs seated at the inauguration.

This is also seen as Kendrick's stage was a Play Station controller. Not only did it remind of circus rings visually, but it was a game battle stage. The Great American Game is a battle royale of the commoners for the amusement of the rich whites.

Remember the foods / Them color was tin and brown / But now they 100 and blue - For this I'll just say, look what the last election said about lowering the price of eggs... and look at the prices now.

The revolution about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy - Election 2024 once more. *Edit to add, the first part of this lyric is in reference to the Black Liberation Song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. Thanks to everyone who mentioned that.

THE FLAG DANCERS - yes, the dancers formed the US flag... off of the backs of Black people. Not a single white person in sight, and that's true of the cotton pickers in the fields. Plantations are part of how the US came to economic prominence after being a "backwater" colony. Remember tobacco? Cotton? Our bloodlines do. *Edit to add: they also all piled out of a clown car. The US flag in a clown car? Brilliant.

The red and blue dancers are also notable for representing the Crips and Bloods, two infamous street gangs. The dance in Not Like Us is the Crip Walk. I recommend researching more on your own time about them, but just know they are a large part of the stereotype of Black people being "ghetto."

TOO LOUD, TOO RECKLESS, TOO GHETTO. Do you really know how to play the game? - This is exactly what Black people, especially Black men, get told all the time. It's why we change our names on resumes if they sound "too Black." It's why we codeswitch in non-Black company. This is especially rich considering how non-Black people love our culture and love to make money off of us, as the latter part of the quote points to. And it's even more profound during the Super Bowl-- the NFL is majority Black players.

STREET LIGHT A CAPELLA -- "thug" stereotype dancers to counteract the a capella connotations, with Uncle Sam then saying that Kendrick figured out "bringing other street guys around being a culture cheat code." Yes, this is a direct hit at Drake (listen to "Not Like Us") but also politically. Look up "model minority". Notably I would point to Candace Owens, or the Miami Venezuelan political group that's been in the news recently, especially as this directly led to Kendrick being surrounded by...

DANCERS IN WHITE -- it's white America. That's... that's the allegory.

NOT LIKE US TEASER -- Kendrick says "Not Like Us" is "their favorite song." -> he means white people specifically here. It comes after he's surrounded by all white dancers, the women around him who are his call and response are also in white (my opinion, they represent the industry). He's saying "Not Like Us" is the favorite of yts because it is about BLACK MEN FIGHTING. This again is reflected in the video game stage and ringleader Uncle Sam.

SZA -- instead of giving what they want, we see SZA. She's one of Drake's exes and Kendrick has always supported her.

ALL THE STARS -- This was in the first Black Panther movie, which I recommend you watch. Rest in Power Chadwick. Notably, this movie was incredibly mainstream as a major Marvel movie, and then we have Uncle Sam say...

"THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WANTS: NICE AND CALM. DON'T MESS THIS UP" -- translation: Marvel (the industry, America, etc.) wanted a safe, semi-pop song because white American likes safe pop songs, not Kendrick's usual heavy rap style about his life as a Black man! Don't mess up what you've got going mainstream for having this "Black rap feud" with Drake, who is an R&B model minority to white people because he's safe.

So what does Kendrick say?

IT'S A CULTURAL DIVIDE / IMMA GET IT ON THE FLOOR -- He was warned not to be political or apologetically Black for this Super Bowl performance, but he is using this big stage opportunity to speak out.

40 ACRES AND A MULE / THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC -- 40 acres and a mule are what the freed slaves were promised. Instead, this land went to white sharecroppers. Research Jim Crow laws.

THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME / BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE -- rig the election, rig the industry like with model minority Drake, rig the Great American Game with culture war to distract from active class warfare.

NOT LIKE US -- the only thing I'll mention because it made me holler is Serena Williams crip walking on Drake's metaphorical grave. She's another one of his exes.

TURN THE TV OFF -- exactly like he said! The TV is a distraction, the Super Bowl is a distraction, the mainstream news is often a distraction. Turn it off and get with your people!

GAME OVER — could not see this on my stream but at the end of the performance, the lights in the stadium spelled this out. The world is watching, America…

In conclusion, Kendrick Lamar is a visionary and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

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I rarely bring this up because it feels like fairly silly and low-stakes compared to all the other effects of american imperialism, but one of the funniest things when Americans deny that living in the imperial core and the center of global cultural hegemony confers them any sort of privilege over people from the imperial periphery is that like. In order for this conversation where you tell me you have no privilege over me to even be able to take place one of us had to learn the other's language, and it wasn't you.

I think the fact that by default the onus of learning the other's language to enable communication is always put on the other side is a pretty significant privilege on the cultural front.

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BE MAD BE SAD BUT DONT U DARE GIVE UP

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my cat is an agent of random acts of biting, especially of anyone who touches his cardboard boxes

my dog, however, is the one who waits until we're asleep and then wanders through the apartment looking for garbage to chew on and carefully spread across the floor

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Apparently, Aaron Fullerton's tweet wasn't even satire. Trump supporters actually, literally think like that.

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Hey folks, with the news that this February's Steam Next contains over 2500 games - it's pretty disappointing to say the least. While games are fantastic, and it's great that so many are being made - it also just makes it impossible for small indie games to get any sort of discoverability.

This is made worse by Generative AI which causes lists to be filled with phoned-in slop. While Steam has added an AI Generated Content Disclaimer on store pages, it's often hidden at the bottom and requires searching each store page individually.

I've written a post in their Suggestions / Ideas forum to allow players to filter out games made with Generative AI. As far as I'm concerned, it should work in a similar way to players being able to filter Adult/NSFW content.

If you have a Steam account and want to leave a comment in support, I've linked it the post below.

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It's absolutely important to recognize trans people as a very very vulnerable demographic to the fash and often *one of* their first targets but I just saw a post saying the nazis came for trans people first & that feels... inaccurate. I mean. Pretty famously their main thing was jews

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*cackling*

If OTW weren’t around, this wouldn’t be “scaremongering”: It would be the inescapable status quo.

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Puritanism is getting worse around the globe and conservatives and fascists will absolutely be first going harder against porn, then use that against queer people. You HAVE to realise this and oppose anti porn measures and laws, be in solidarity with sex workers, and listen to them when they call this shit out. It's going to be vitally important.

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the whole point of a zine is that it's cheap to produce, amateur and homemade. if you're being asked to apply to participate in a print project, it is not a zine. if the final product is being printed and bound professionally, it is not a zine. if you are being asked to enter into any kind of licensing agreement more complex than "my work can be reproduced as part of this publication" it is not a zine. nine times put of ten if the final product costs more than $5 you have left zine country. im so serious about this.

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