#for me to absorb information

[cantsayidont]

I still sort of like the movie CASINO (1995) even though it's objectively pretty bad. Everyone says it's inferior to Scorsese and Pileggi's earlier GOODFELLAS, which is true, but GOODFELLAS does nothing for me: I don't hate it, but I also don't see why people are nuts for it and I don't think it has any particular claim to Cinematic Greatness.

CASINO doesn't either, except maybe for Sharon Stone's performance (she has to work three times as hard because she's the only woman in the movie with more than two lines of dialogue), but its period design manages to look actually lush and attractive rather than campy (a feat more recent shows and movies set in the same period constantly fail to match), and I enjoy the documentary quality of the overlapping voiceovers that allow Sam (De Niro) and Nicky (Joe Pesci) to explain the ins and outs of the characters' various scams. (It IS based on a true story, although all the names have been changed.) The voiceovers are sometimes clunky, but without them, you'd be left with the weak story, and I think it would be unbearable. As it is, it's a movie I can put on in the background for three hours to satisfying effect, I guess sort of like people who like podcasts and video essays use podcasts and video essays.

[caast0rr]

Good evening freaks

[feather-bone]

This is the devil’s hole pupfish! A tiny species that lives only in One water-filled limestone cavern in Nevada. It was one of the first animals on the endangered species list. At the last count in 2022 there were 263 pupfish observed - the most in 19 years! They’re tracked pretty carefully, as their 215 square foot habitat (the smallest of any know vertebrate) is fragile and has been disturbed in the past by groundwater extraction and other human interference.

[ID: an illustration of a shiny metallic blue fish, the male devil’s hole pupfish, facing to the right. It is on a lighter blue background with a ripple pattern. End.] l

[an-internet-introvert]

I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow to a dash of

[balkanradfem]

Do you ever think about how sad and messed up it is to grow up in this world as a little girl who likes to read. Because you are a child, and you don't get that there's a difference in who writes the books, you read everything you like, you read the adventures and the fantasy and the mysteries and the traumatic stuff and if you're also very isolated and lonely, these books build your worldview. Because why wouldn't they? They're written by humans, so they have the attitudes, opinions, perceptions, morals and spirits of human beings in them, they're telling you what humans think and feel about things, how they go about situations, what they imagine, what they desire. What your role in all this is, or what it could potentially be.

But, since you are not capable of differentiating the material, and you just read what is available to you, you end up reading a lot of books written by m*n. You also have to go thru the required reading at school - 90% written by m*n. And so slowly, since young age, without even socializing or learning it thru interaction, you find yourself in a world shaped by minds who do not have empathy for women, especially not for little girls. You find yourself relating to the male protagonists, but you also find out that girls only play a passive role in their stories. You find that m*n problems are centered, made important, their suffering and violence critical points in the story, while women are cast aside as helpers, servants, givers, caretakers, and generally just exist in the background, not a thought given to what they are going thru.

You learn thru books written by m*n, that your experience is secondary. Even if you cast yourself as the adventuring, immensely important and struggling protagonist, even then the other women in your mind end up being just background characters, caregivers who do not need a thought spared for their suffering.

Books written by m*n, even for children, will trivialize female suffering to the point where they shape the child's mind into one that looks at the world from a male perspective. Where women either don't matter, or are capable only of giving and aiding, to be cast aside for more important matters, such as male aspirations for their own lives.

Thinking back, I understand why I felt myself unimportant and trivial in any social setting - I understood my role from the written word, and I knew adults found me trivial, secondary, only a background figure to someone else's adventure or mission. As much as I could fight it in my fantasies, and make myself the main character, it felt like a pipe dream, like something that was incredible self-indulged and selfish and would never translate to reality.

I wish it had been different. I wish I had been introduced specifically and only to books written by women, for women. I wish I had found empathy for myself in those books. I wish I had found myself standing on high ground, equal ground, with other women, our desires centered, our lives translated into tales of epic importance - because that's what they are. I wish I had been born into a world where female perspective is available from the start, not after years of growing up and finding feminist literature and having to re-write my own role in my brain, from all of those years of reading male perspective as the default.

I don't think any little girl should be exposed to literature that shape her world as a place where she doesn't matter. I don't think books written by males and shaped by their worldview should be allowed into children's literature, or teenage or for young adults. Girls should not be learning from fiction that their most important value is empathy and understanding for male problems, and their second, to be desired and/or helpful to them, all while being treated as nothing but service and background noise until you're desired for something. We need to open books and find out that we matter too. That our lives can be the center of our existence, rather than being in the service of someone else's life.

[i-really-like-phrogs]

When someone else’s art is so good you physically can’t look at it because of artistic jealousy

[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

[spiderpawzsys]

I'm so scared people are gonna try and mansplain Minecraft story mode on me just because people are "apologizing" to it.

Bitch it's been my special interest ever since danTDM started playing that shit!

[raccoons-under-a-trenchcoat]

Dearest mutuals of mine

What monster/ cryptid am I? I genuinely just wanna know :3

This can be purely based off of vibes, or my name, or something you know about me

@vvanillavveins @kaithegremlin @robyn-i-guess @buried-in-the-archives @a-hundred-jewels @be-gay-and-deviant @nerdyeli @capn-atlas

[lotus-pear]

collecting bsd mutuals like pokemon rn lmao

[lazyveran]

i think its interesting to point out that azula and katara are both people that value and strive for control, however they value different types of control

katara is someone who's been forced to become an adult at a very young age. she was given the responsibilities of a caregiver without the room to be a child. i think she focusses on an orderly, stable emotional/domestic dynamic and laboriously denies her own needs to achieve that. its also the fact she is, no doubt, attempting to emulate her mother in a way that a child cannot really comprehend. there's an expectation afterall for her to fulfil that empty space. so it comes off as controlling, perhaps even emotionally manipulating at times, while she in turn can be stubborn and wild with her own emotions. it's a fascinating dynamic because she constantly needs to be controlling people, not so much their action but their manner, headspace and so on, but also accepts help from others (when shes not being stubborn)! it's not healthy, per say, but she accepts people as people with their own thoughts, feelings and desires, and moves to accommodate that after they push back

azula on the other hand needs to control everything, all aspects, at all times. she too was forced to be an adult as a child, but she also never had a healthy example of an adult to begin with. her caregivers either left her at a key developmental stage or were. ozai. and as a princess, she's been taught to be a certain role with a country wide responsibility as soon as she could talk. alongside her military training, too! (all of this is taught, might i add, by people who are required to maintain a professional distance. even if she's a child, their society requires her emotional isolation) azula values absolute control and order in all aspects of her life, she's never allowed herself room to contemplate what a fufilling emotional dynamic is. she views everything on a wider scale, so much so she's always a politician, military leader and absolute ruler in every aspect. and in turn, everyone else is not allowed to have their own desires in the face of that. azula quite literally cannot approach people on an equal level, her background and her desperate need to control actively dehumanises them. while intellectually, she's a genius with an innate knowledge as to how people tick, they are always below her in class, in skill, and in her eyes, maturity in itself. which is ironic, really, since that very mindset is more childish than anything - viewing people like toys to play with, rather than humans with thoughts and desires outside her own

there's just. no separation for azula between her inner self and outer self need to control - unlike katara. because despite katara's need for control too, she's FAR more conscious of how a relationship should function. she's far more mature, really, than azula ever will be. in fact i'd argue katara being 'immature' is more an indicator of how stable she is than azula's demeanour. she feels her emotions, feels others emotions, and takes them at a human level. azula tantrums when someone doesnt dance to her tune

[fisheito]

hey. hey you. yeah, yoU!! the one who actually looks at clothing!!! i request help. i need images of wedding dresses that you think would fit the starter trio [yaku, ed, oli]. pls send images........ of any ideas you have🙏

[rileys-battlecats]

i really gotta get better about listening to my own brain and needs when i'm making things. i've been working on a video and i'm almost finished (yippee!!), but drawing this One Specific Frame was giving me trouble. i could have just brute-forced my way through it and finalized the initial sketch, since it was relatively good enough. but instead i left it and took a day off from working on the project, let myself recharge, and came back to the sketch with fresh eyes today. and what do you know, my redrawn sketch today is WAY better! now, i can finalize that frame and be genuinely proud of it, instead of just powering through on something i was less than happy with.

i hadn't done any other art stuff that day when i couldn't get my sketches to look right, so letting myself stop and have a break from the project felt sort of "unearned" i guess. but it's just. what i needed! and the break did what i needed it to do; i was able to come back later and make something i could be proud of.

anyway i guess this is me saying that, if you're like me and have this weird morality-complex about letting yourself rest, it's ok to take breaks, even if you feel like you haven't "earned" one yet :)

[ansburg]

[markantonys]

one of my earliest WOT book-related memories is reading the brief wikipedia summaries for each book and getting to one of the slog books that mentioned "perrin continues searching for his wife" and i thought "damn, he still hasn't found her yet?" little did i know

[chilapis]

Flooded by assignments but blessed beautiful mornings, all. <3 I didn’t get time to properly interact or check in with people that day so, playing my part now. I do hope everyone has been well. <3