#I simply must believe

[sainz100]

just a small Daniel moment from the pit lane on Thursday ahead of the Singapore GP

[hinamie]

i don't normally participate in these redraw challenges but it's megumi so i'll make an exception

[inkskinned]

oh you know it's all latestage capitalism but the thing is. how are you supposed to be a person inside of this. a person trying to be a better version of yourself.

oh, you started working young, which was kind of hard, but it's just the way stuff works sometimes. and it was 2008 and your family couldn't afford heat. but it's fine, you grow a spine and get used to the professional world and besides it was the suburbs we're talking about here, like, your life could have been actually hard, so what if your father lost his job and you can't afford to move or turn the lights back on. and once you start making money, it's good. you keep doing that. because now they're relying on you. so you have to do that.

oh you were in thousands of dollars of debt at 17 years old so that you could go to school, because you have to go to school if you want to get a "real" job. you even did it "right", you worked parttime and attended community college before you transferred to a public school. you were under so many merit scholarships.

which is fine. you pick yourself up and you say like, okay. i graduated college. i'm holding down a job. i'm doing the Adult Thing, which looks and acts like this, according to all the books i've read. you start with the shitty job and then you climb that corporate ladder.

but the shitty job doesn't cover rent and you stretch yourself too-thin so you get sick. good luck with that. the shitty job no longer pays for your meals. everyone asks why you don't just move, but there's nowhere to move to. and with what money are you going to be moving? and then the loans come back, because they were never going to forgive them, because you were 17 and trying to do the right thing, which was stupid. people are now saying you shouldn't have even gone to school.

which is fine. but because you have no other option, so you do the shitty job, and you apply every day for like 5 new ones, and despite the fact everyone says "there's no one who wants to work!" it's actually just that nobody is fucking hiring so you can either work for 13 dollars an hour in the shitty place you know (where at least you have a passingly friendly relationship with the manager) or you can start from scratch again with a different 13 dollars an hour without knowing how much abuse from the new job you'll be taking.

and if you quit you lose your insurance. if you quit you lose your housing. if you quit, you'll be another burnout kid. the lazy ones. these assholes, look at them!

and you come home to a family dinner and you hear from your father the same old thing. how he worked hard at his job and yes it sucked for a while but he was able to provide for the family and then the house and the dog and the rest of barbie's dream vacation. how the insurance did cover some of it. how you just really need to start speaking up more in manager conversations so they know you're a go-getter. you want to tell him - did you know we're actually doing more now hourly than any previous generation? - but you can't remember where you heard that statistic, and you're far too tired for the fucking argument. and then he starts in on his usual bit. where's the house? where's your kids? where's your ambition.

the same job the same money the same hours doesn't do it anymore. the same nose-to-the-grindstone now just shreds your face off. there's no such thing as upwards mobility, not really. and as far as you're aware, the money certainly is not trickling. you do the soulless stupid shit you signed up for because you fucking have to or else you literally risk your life (food, the apartment, the insurance), but it's not getting you anything. you download the stupid "save more" app and you budget and you do every right thing and then the price of eggs is 7 dollars and you say - oh great! another thing i have to fucking worry about now!

and you go to your stupid job and everyone in your father's generation just tells you to be better about being an adult. they have their homes and their savings account and their bailout and they say. well have you tried not drinking starbucks. well your generation just spends too much on clothing. well you might just be too addicted to travelling. and you - because you need the job - you bite your tongue and don't say i am being held prisoner and you're suggesting i stop pacing my cell if i don't like the scenery and you don't say what the fuck do you think i've been doing with my money and you don't say i haven't spent a cent on something nice in literally forever much less coffee you arrogant asshole. you open and close your bank app and check your loans and check your credit score and check fucking zillow and ziprecruiter and apartments.com just one time more. and still they give you that demeaning little grin and say - see, what you need is -

what you need is for your meds to stop being so fucking expensive. what you need is for the housing bubble to explode into dust. what you need is for billionaires to choke on their wealth. what you need is actual help. what you will get is more economic advice from people who are older-and-wiser.

and above you, almost in a glimmer, you can see the wedged smile of your debt getting toothier, wider.

[theophagie]

Don't know why people think that Verosika lied when she called Blitz selfish in the sheets, I fully believe that it was the stolussy that converted him to reciprocal down-going. I Trust that it was

[genericpuff]

There is this rumor that the post from Rachel where she is upset about this years Nomination not getting hyped, might be fake

lmao I'm not taking the bait, anon, you can literally find the post and prove that it's real on her BlueSky in less than 30 seconds. How we interpret it is largely our own opinion, obviously, but the post itself is very much real and very easy to find.

[slyandthefamilybook]

...And here we come upon a problem as basic as the nature of knowledge itself: all of our prodigious cognitive and computational abilities are inadequate to a full comprehension of our complex world. As humans, we remain heavily dependent on certain tools of perception and conception that our cultural and biological heritages have taught us are useful. These tools–such as language, causal logic, religion, mathematics–are indeed powerful, but they are powerful precisely because they reduce complexity to intelligibility by projecting our mental concepts onto the world. One consequence of this is that our recognition of significance is always what some philosophers call "theory laden," meaning that it is shaped by what our theoretical framework and cognitive tools encourage us to recognize as meaningful. Anti-Judaism, as I have argued throughout this book, is precisely this: a powerful theoretical framework for making sense of the world.

...

After all, no matter how overrepresented the Jews may have been among the European "bourgeoisie," they remained a tiny minority of that class. How could that tiny minority convincingly come to represent for so many the evolving evils of the capitalist world order? More broadly, how could untold millions of Europeans (and not only Germans) come to believe–or act as if they believed–the claims of the Nazis (and not only the Nazis) that Jews and their conspiracies so threatened the security of the world that they needed to be excluded, expelled, or exterminated? According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the liquidation of the Jews of Europe was not grounded in "reality." It took place in the vast gap between and explanatory framework ("anti-Semitism") that made satisfying sense of the world to a significant portion of its citizens, and the complexity of the world itself.

They set out to explore that gap in a philosophical history of modern thought they drafted in 1944 and later published as Dialectics of Enlightenment. Their final chapter, "Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment," suggested that what gave anti-Semitic ideas their power was not so much their relation to reality, but rather their exemption from reality checks–that is, from the critical testing to which so many other concepts were subjected. "What is pathological about anti-Semitism is not projective behavior as such, but the absence of reflection in it." In their terms, the problem is a heightened resistance to reflection about the gap between our ideas about Jews, Judaism, or Jewishness, and the complexity of the world. From their point of view, anti-Semitism provides adherents with a cognitive comfort: the fantasy that the gap between our understanding of the cosmos and its fearful complexity does not exist.

...

...[A]cross several thousand years, myriad lands, and many different spheres of human activity, people have used ideas about Jews and Judaism to fashion the tools with which they construct the reality of their world. The goal of my project, like Horkeheimer and Adorno's, is to encourage reflection about our "projective behavior," that is, about the ways in which our deployment of concepts into and onto the world might generate "pathological" fantasies of Judaism. And my choice of method owes something to Auerbach's conviction that the study of a given moment, problem, or even a single word in the distant past can teach us something about a much longer history, extending even to our own.

Selected excerpts from Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (2013 Nirenberg, David)

[rad-roche]

okay!! painting wrapped up, eager for you to see it. i have some super cool bonus news. guys

never stop posting

[glitteringcrab]

They built a wall around infinity

What is the Central Finite Curve wall made of???

Is it some random sci-fi stuff like "sub-ether barrier"?

Well, if the theory that the colour yellow is associated with brain stuff is true, I'd like to point out the following:

1. The ultra beam Eyepatch Morty shot through the Citadel to bring down the Curve was yellow:

It became stronger after Eyepatch Morty infused it with blender-ed Ricks and Mortys:

Why did that work??

How could that have possibly pierced through some sort of dimensional wall? Is it really just a matter of something as "benign" as calibration or killing them to be thorough?

2. And who else, apart from Eyepatch Morty, had been collecting the bloodied remains of Mortys in vats?

Why, the Citadel Ricks.

That's... odd.

Did they collect physically "defective" or misbehaving clones before disposing them all off in one go?

Was it a slaughterhouse, with excess rickless Mortys being sent to death?

Was it a sort of punishment to terrorize Mortys into obedience?

Was it a sort of execution for criminal Mortys?

Was the number of Mortys dying in the Citadel from horrible living conditions simply that high, that they needed to be collected and disposed off in a special way?

Could be any of the above really... But even at the first time I watched this episode I thought that was odd.

(...and why have portals that apparently do nothing but spew blood... Where did that blood come from?)

(Is it Rick blood...?)

3. Rick says this concerning their brainwaves:

He's making it sound like it's just a matter of detection. Visibility. Camouflage. Nothing actually substantial, just a matter of stealth.

...says Morty, referring to his "camouflage" properties.

...replies Rick, which seems kinda redundant, doesn't it?

He agrees with Morty that "Morty is more than a human shield", but the only actual "more" thing in Rick's subsequent description of Morty is the phrase "perfect impenetrable".

Is he just rubbing in Morty's face how effective he is as camouflage?

...Or is he talking about something else?

Something... truly impenetrable...?

What. IS. The. "Wall around infinity". Made. Of??????

(...is it like... crystallized brainwaves of Mortys who died painfully...?)

(I mean, if you can crystallize time, and infuse a freaking liquid with code that allows it to pierce through dimensions, why not also be able to liquify and project brainwaves?)

[mikesbasementbeets]

are you arguing that bi mike believers, unlabeled mike believers, and those who are undecided are homophobic?

no. i’m not arguing that any person or sets of people are homophobic. i do think that there are certain avenues of thought that come up often in arguments against a definitive gay mike reading which stem from homophobic biases that, given the benefit of the doubt, the people arguing them may not realize are homophobic or even realize that they hold those biases.

believing that mike is bi or being undecided about it doesn’t mean you’re homophobic. obviously. however, plainly acknowledging that mike canonically does not exhibit attraction to women and then insisting that he could still be attracted to women in spite of that, to me, indicates a (possibly subconscious) bias against men who are not attracted to women. if your instinct when confronted with a character who presents a categorical lack of opposite-gender attraction, concurrent with active displays of same-gender attraction, is to round up every possible alternative explanation, all equally hypothetical and unsupported by canon, to avoid coming to the logical conclusion of that specific narrative dichotomy (homosexuality), then all i’m asking is that you examine what biases you might be holding onto that lead you to that reaction.

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the whole "Fandom Is An Escape, so why should I have to care this much about misogyny/racism/ableism/transphobia/etc." thing. Idk about the rest of you, but it gets kind of hard for me to "escape" when I keep seeing people say the same vile things about characters who share aspects of my identity that I hear all the time in real life.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Got a mini tarot deck at Five Below because it’s adorable and the Ogham oracle deck I’ve been studying for the past few weeks is very very complicated to use without prior experience with cartomancy, which I do not have. So I tried the “past present future” thing with the mini deck. But it didn’t really give me anything coherent and overall didn’t “feel” right; so I just reshuffled, did a 4x4 grid, and flipped the cards over. It makes more sense that way lol.

So far it’s telling me:

Your life is harmonious as it is (Two of Cups), so you don’t need to take on any new things at the moment, despite there being many opportunities presenting themselves to you (Four of Cups). Even though you are powerful, fortune and opportunity are on your side and you will succeed if you take on something new (The Magician), it will be more than you can handle and you will exhaust yourself; focus on healing for now (reversed Four of Swords).

Surprisingly accurate but half of the magic is in how you interpret the cards… so personal bias comes in. If your head isn’t clear and you’re wanting to hear something specific; then your reading will be skewed. Maybe this is subconsciously what I wanted to hear. I’ll try to interpret it another way as well just to see what I get.

Whatever… One thing is for certain though: it does force you to slow down and think… No wonder the Jehovah’s Witnesses hate it so much lol

[vellichorom]

well see i don't think shuu's the kind of person to keep ryuuji's stuff really close to him or even remotely try to think of him that much, like yes i have to imagine almost every one of that man actions isn't without ryuuji's influence but see- what i'm thinking is that after his passing, shuu quietly took a good handful - if not the majority, of ryuuji's things & has them locked in a box locked in a closet somewhere he has absolutely NO plans to ever open the box or look at his things again, but it's important to him that only HE has his things in that way of " i don't trust nor want anyone else to handle it, " in a way of very emptily giving too much of a shit about his stained labcoat or his archived notes & research & also

this is NOT papa/isa / ryuuji x shuu & if you choose to interpret it as such i will fucking lobotomize you

[compacflt]

I was wondering if you had thoughts about how Ice and Mav's politics don't fully align with their actions? There was a post where you said Ice's politics are more socially liberal than Mav's but Mav is also the one who goes out to La Jolla to hit on guys before Ice, and later again when he's broken up with Ice, but Ice only goes out with women out of fear for his honor or whatever. Same with their respective thoughts on feminism, with Mav's mild respect for Charlie (telling Ice not all women fit the stereotype) but later Ice is the one who sends Juno to Mav's Top Gun class without telling him she's a woman and Ice has a respectful friendship with Juno. I think you said Ice is vaguely on the ace-aro spectrum (demi-homoromantic) which is a sort of fascinating irony that he doesn't have the words for it whereas Mav is the one with the theories about Ice's sexuality. Though with their hypocrisies and inconsistencies this all just feeds into their characterizations of the fact that they keep divorcing their actions from their spoken words from their identities.

okay going to take this point by point

1. yes i have addressed their politics in relation to their actions before, so maybe read this post and this post before you read this one, just to see where my other thoughts line up

2. gay republicans and conservatives do exist (at the very least certainly republicans and conservatives who have gay sex in secret)

3. before maverick is a political actor he is a human being, and the characterization that we are primarily given for him is that he is impulsive and reckless and doesn’t think through his actions. As ive written about many times before—from a story construction standpoint, his thoughtlessness is his number one most important character trait. He is both thoughtlessly dangerous (his hero’s “fatal flaw;” he can’t stop himself from making bad decisions) and thoughtlessly brilliant (the navy’s best and most daring and heroic pilot). He does what he wants without thinking about it; and he makes excuses and hollow promises whenever that plan doesn’t work out (“I know better than that. It will never ever happen again;” [it happens again] “I’m not gonna let you down. I promise.” [goose dies shortly thereafter]). His thoughtless impulsiveness overrides everything else. Maybe the act of having gay sex (to address your “he gets fucked in La Jolla before ice” point) is politically subversive, but for Maverick’s thoughtless character that we are shown in Top Gun, the most subversive possible thing would be to LABEL the gay sex and think through the consequences of it. To call a spade a spade and call himself gay or bi or queer or whatever. That would be the most subversive (and with mav, entirely unbelievable imo) possible thing. That takes conscious effort of thought, something maverick is near-incapable of doing. As long as he can get away with it without thinking about it, he’s politically in the clear, with regards to his character & character arc. If that makes sense. “Don’t think. Just do.” That’s literally his motto lmfao. He represents thoughtless action as an archetype; his politics come secondary to his desires

4. Their “respective thoughts on feminism” are divided into two camps: 1. “Professional as required by the law” and 2. “Sex pest mode.” They’re naval officers in the 1980s. Whether republican or democrat, that’s kind of par for the course. How men treat women can be a performance to other men. Any respect i made them show towards women had broader, more metatextual “need to move the conversation/story from A to B” reasoning behind it. See the first post I linked for much more on that.

5. i never said ice was on the ace/aro spectrum, or if i did i DEFINITELY meant it sarcastically. That could not be further from what i believe. This isn’t something I’ve ever discussed on this blog before, but a MASSIVE part of the philosophical discussion I’ve been trying to moderate within this project over the last year is the question— “do labels even work with characters under these very specific and extraordinarily extreme conditions and societal pressures?” It’s a question I took from my time studying early American history—the contexts of certain environments, and I would definitely count the elite officer ranks of the navy in the 90s and 2000s as one of these certain environments, simply Are Not Conducive to the easier (path of least resistance maybe) ways we civilians handle sexuality and friendship and trauma. There are so many variables and external and internal pressures within an environment like the upper ranks of career navy officers that sexual orientation labels lose all nuance and accuracy. I don’t think Ice (as i have written him) is gay. I don’t think he’s straight. I don’t think he’s bi. I think he’s an unlabelable product of too many variables for labels to have any effect on how he is perceived. Which, in our society built around labels and categories, is admittedly difficult to wrestle with. But doesn’t make it any less worth wrestling with.

6. Yes, ice and mav’s hypocrisy is the linchpin of the entire story.

They’re both trying to have their cake (“honor” and moral superiority based on the harmful traditional subjective morals arbitrated by elite navy officership) and eat it too (a fulfilling relationship with the love of their lives). & the point is that they cant. they have to settle for one.

[remyfire]

When the writer agonies hit.

[suns-diary]

I will always indulge in the prospect of a parasocial relationship i fear. no matter who the artist might be. the fact that I exist and i love this person and their work must mean that they love me too. for the mere reason that I see their existence. they might not know of my existence but it still means something, because it connected to anothers

[iphigeniacomplex]

anyone can suck strap but you have to have a working understanding of brechtian technique in order to really appreciate it