#Independent Re

[covington-shenanigans]

in honor of this amazing post by @robotmango. thank u for ur service, I think of you and your suffering every August since 2016

(i have no idea what you and/or your husband look like, please accept any needed apologies for inaccuracies in gender/race/height/tendency to sarcasm/etc. hope you don't mind that i immortalized your already immortal and correct opinions in what I suppose is technically RPF fan art)

[yellodisney]

[fjordfolk]

every time someone in a discussion about breeding for BOAS reduction in pugs says to 'look up this program called Retromops' i slip a little arsenic into the produce section at the grocery store

[prolifeproliberty]

Before we hit 4th of July...

Listen. I know our country is in shambles. Our culture has been torn apart. Our government is the enemy of the people. Our institutions are captured by ideologues. Our media and government have been lying to us since before any of us were born. The Constitution has been ripped to shreds. We have long since passed the point where others would have begun throwing tea in the harbor.

I am not proud of where our country is now. We are in decline. I fear for where we are headed.

Independence Day is not a celebration of our government or our leaders. It's also not a celebration of what our country is today. It's not even really a celebration of some long-gone glory days.

Independence Day is two things:

A reminder of what our country was intended to be, that we should not be complacent or satisfied with things as they are now.

A chance to be obnoxious and annoy non-Americans

So starting at about 11pm tonight I will continue my tradition of having scheduled posts publish every hour for the duration of Independence Day.

I don't want to hear all the edgy takes about how terrible our country is. I know. I'm aware. You're not being original. Being disillusioned doesn't make you cool. Just let me have this one day - and maybe let yourself have a little fun with being American.

[j3nnix]

otra coronacion de gloria

[generallemarc]

Another day, another Wikipedia janny getting mad at me for trying to edit articles to be honest about the fact that communist/Marxist parties are inherently far-left

Like, my guy. I get that you're one small step above being a Discord mod and that you're thus barely sapient, but since you patrol wikipedia specifically to helicopter-parent articles you like I feel like I'm justified in assuming that you both know how to read and have read the articles about Marxism and communism on this site you're so devoted to, so you know what they are. And so I ask, if that is not far left, then what is? If the end point of the spectrum is not "far", how can anything ever be?

[bogkeep]

originally for my thesis i was gonna like, focus on each aspect of the prague astronomical clock like its history, its function, and its design separately - but even other than this scope was way too big for me, the design IS the function. like, obviously, It's A Clock........ but! the reason the face plate has multiple colors is because they represent the time of day. the blue field is day, the orange is dawn and dusk, and the black circle is night. the placement of the sun symbol indicates the placement in the day cycle. I Know I Know It's A Clock Of Course It Does That but it's different to how we're used to reading clocks in this day and age.

anyway it reminded me of first year of watchmaker school, when we were learning to blue steel, a process that gives steel a specific material quality and also turns it blue. you might see high end watched that have blue hands and blue screws, for example, and it's not Just for the aesthetic, it's a sign of quality, but it has BECOME a preferred aesthetic BECAUSE of the quality. my teacher asked me if i, as a former art history student, knew whether it was common for something to Become Beautiful because it was a Desired Quality. i didn't have a good answer at the time but i have clearly not stopped thinking about it. i think it's a kind of survivorship bias - something can be the most aesthetically pleasing and beautiful but it won't really matter if it crumbles to dust within a couple years and there's no way for future generations to appreciate it. it doesn't make it less beautiful, only that we have no clue it ever existed. so in that sense, the beauty of functionality persists

[aliusfrater]

it couldn't even have been a bedroom. it had to be the panic room. with metal walls and a bucket and hunting magazines and a pitcher of water. and a mirror. and the door has a metal toggle to view whatever is inside

[queenlua]

The crisis of the last year with student protests has made even the richest institutions aware of how much of their presumed wealth can be yanked away from them by a donor class who are increasingly inclined to exert their influence and authority in openly oligarchic ways. The obsession with safety—and the contradictions of that obsession—is as much about financial management as anything else. But that also is a wider sociocultural formation: the American upper middle-class is generally an asset class now who think about safety in the same way as universities both because all institutions with asset-based wealth have to and because they personally have to safeguard their assets in the same fashion, and face some of the same risks from liability exposure. [. . .] Moving away from the caretaker era can’t just be a matter of exposing students to risk and dismantling systems that make safety the mandatory product of an intrusive regime of surveillance and correction. If the people in charge inside the university and outside of it aren’t equally exposed to the natural consequences of their actions and decisions, all this means is forcefully communicating to students—or perhaps all young people—their relative powerlessness and vulnerability. It means deciding that the lesson you really want to teach is that it���s bad to be powerless and thus you should strive in life for power and wealth in order to be beyond consequences. Arguably, if the caretaker era and the bystander era were both aligned with a wider social ideology that was broadly shared across a generation, then this in fact the new ethos of our time—that there is no safety but in power, and that where power believes people are not being sufficiently punished for the things that power disdains, it will find a way to make consequences where there have been none.

bleak essay that nonetheless collects a lot of idle thoughts i've had in one place & puts them together with more coherence than i've ever managed

[stopper-my-heart]

Heartstopper library posters: Part 1/3

CW: Images and mentions of Ben Hope. No non-consensual physical touch is shown in the images but short descriptions of actions are given as part of describing the library meeting scene between Ben and Charlie in S1E1.

Yes, the library posters in Heartstopper are complicated enough to need multiple posts to attempt to unpack them.

How many layers are intentional? I can't say. All I can say is that the layers haven't stopped making sense yet.

Here in Part 1, we're taking a fairly straightforward approach to the quotations on the posters in S1E1 with a bit of cinematographic interpretation.

Let's get acquainted with the posters (text below, don't strain your eyes) --

We have:

"I am no bird and no net ensnares me" -- from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (photo 1, left, above)

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance" -- from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (photo 2, middle, above)

"To thine own self be true" -- from Hamlet by William Shakespeare (photo 3, right, above)

----------

Here's the context of when we first see these posters, at the very beginning of S1E1:

As Charlie walks into school and enters the library to meet Ben (who doesn't show up that time), he walks in between the first two posters to get to their meeting spot.

The third poster ("To thine own self be true") remains out of focus during this trip to the library. It partially comes into view when Charlie arrives at his and Ben's meeting spot (photo 1, left, below).

After Charlie checks his phone and sees Ben's text ("actually can we meet up at break instead?"), when we then see him start to type his reply, a little bit more of the poster becomes visible (photo 2, middle, below).

The poster's quotation is only fully visible (but still out of focus) once Charlie has sent his text ("okay 😊❤️") (photo 3, right, below). Note that this also corresponds with the start of Headmaster Stephen Fry's announcement reminding students about the new vertical form groups.

It seems like the poster is acknowledging that Charlie's not fully ready to admit to himself the truth of what's happening with Ben or to stand up for himself, but that he's maybe getting closer (or the poster's trying to help, anyway). If nothing else, the poster seems to be gently calling Charlie out, especially with the text he sent. We can see by Charlie's face (photo 3 above) that even he doesn't believe it's "okay 😊❤️".

(Maybe the poster is also indicating hope: hope for the new form group and a certain someone Charlie might meet there, someone who will want Charlie to be true to himself.)

----------

When Charlie and Ben finally do meet in the library later in S1E1, we again see Charlie walk in between the first two posters. Charlie and the posters begin fuzzy and come into focus together. "I am no bird and no net ensnares me"* is especially prominent.

*Note that the full sentence this quotation comes from is: "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you." More on this in future posts.

This time the third poster ("To thine own self be true") is also in focus, though partially out of frame (photo 1, left, below). Ben's head moves to block some of it and then the camera angle shifts a bit so that the poster is fully obscured behind Charlie while his and Ben's index fingers are interlocked (photo 2, right, below).

After Charlie looks at the smiley face Nick drew on his hand, a little bit of the text of the third poster is again visible in between Charlie and Ben, but it's in the background, out of focus. As Ben kisses Charlie, the words are once again blocked by Ben's head.

Clearly these posters are trying harder and harder to Talk To Charlie -- they want him to love himself, believe he's worth more than how Ben is treating him, be honest with himself and act accordingly, and break free from Ben -- and they finally succeed. Seemingly later on the same day is when Charlie breaks up with Ben.

[berryblu-soda]

catch me low key crying on that last MAWS episode hahahah, something abt lois´ dynamic w her dad just hits hard :´)

[kissnpunch]

q!philza is one of the most lovely persons on qsmp; the way he loves his kids and protect every egg not matter what is so endearing to me when you understand they’re the company of a hurt and lonely crow, with years of experience, now he has two little souls expecting to follow his steps and he tries his best to keep the innocence of them in a sickening island.

[crimeronan]

the 38% of people saying they'd go back and redo their lives if they could are making me Desperately sad. cannot express enough how important it is to realize what opportunities you've missed out on n what things have disappointed you & then try to go for those opportunities in your adult life. make the choices that your future self will look back on fondly n gratefully.

[graaaaceeliz]

Bookshop.org have an offer on! Buy any book by midnight tonight (8th September 2024) and be entered into the prize draw for £250 gift card!

Matt Kirkland's Dracula Daily book is available from their website, so now is maybe a good time to buy that if you have a spare £20/$20ish.

[1800duckhotline]

they look like a couple... a couple of bestiessss!🫰

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

Lone brave soul ventures into the horrors of background art. This is due with full colour and self-evaluation by 3pm lmao I'm fucked 🤪🤙