#publication: the prospector

[absmarchive]

What Texas SB8 reflects about our society

[nightwonder7]

OMG norton x alice my beloved!!! stealing that anons hc lol! proceeds to eat ur art and runs away

Funneh headcanon =w= Ffffffffff okay I guess the cat is out of the bag now >_>;;; My mutuals have given me nortalice brainrot and there was nothing I could do about it 💀 Never in a million years did I think a ship would grow on me, but here we are 😭

If I'm being honest, I'm still a little nervous about it all ;u; Hope things go well, though...

[rabbitcruiser]

Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day

Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day commemorates the start of the  California Gold Rush, which began on January 24, 1848, when James  Marshall discovered gold while building a saw mill for John Sutter, near  what is now Coloma, California. The day has its roots in International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and was inspired by Prospectors Day, which was once held at Knott's Berry Farm each year on January 24. It also was inspired by an episode of the Simpsons with the following exchange:

Bart: That ain't been popular since aught-six, dagnabbit. Homer: Bart, what did I tell you? Bart: No talking like a grizzled 1890's prospector, consarn it.

Common examples of characters talking like grizzled prospectors in popular culture include Dallas McKennon narrating Disneyland's Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland and Big Thunder Mountain, Gabby Hayes—both drunk and sober—in many Western films, Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles, Will Ferrell as Gus Chiggins on Saturday Night Live, and Walter Huston in The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

Prospectors first came to the Sacramento Valley after Marshall found  flakes of gold in the American River near Sutter's Mill, at the base of  the Sierra Nevada Mountains. At the time there were less than 1,000  non-native inhabitants in California. Newspapers began reporting the  discovery of gold, and by August, 4,000 miners had descended on the  area. The first people that came from outside of the territory came by  boat, and arrived from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands—soon to be called  the Hawaiian Islands, Mexico, Peru, China, and Chili.

In December 1848, President James K. Polk announced a report by  Colonel Richard Mason which spoke of the abundance of gold in  California; this prompted more prospectors to travel to the territory.  Throughout 1849, thousands arrived, either traveling by sea or over  land, and became known as '49ers. Mining towns popped up in the area,  and with them came shops, saloons, and brothels. Many mining towns  became lawless, and San Francisco became an important city in the  territory. By the end of 1849, the non-native population had swelled to  100,000. The Gold Rush helped California gain statehood in 1850, and  gold discovery peaked in the state in 1852. In all, more than 750,000  pounds of gold were extracted during the Gold Rush.

The implication of a grizzled prospector is of one who has stayed so  long searching for gold that their hair has turned gray. Some  prospectors refused to quit the profession and continued to live in the  Western territories. So, when Bart Simpson mentioned a grizzled  prospector from the 1890s, he was referring to a prospector that had  stayed more than forty years after the Gold Rush happened, still trying  to find gold, or other commodities such as silver, oil, radium, and  uranium. Besides a gray beard, the stereotypical grizzled prospector had  faded clothes, missing teeth, a pickaxe, and a mule. They had bouts of  gold fever, and were suspicious of whoever came close to their claim.

How to Observe Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day

Celebrate the day talking like a grizzled prospector. Here are a few words prospectors commonly used, that you could use today:

Dadburn: to curse; e.g.: "Dadburned boll weevil done 'et my crop!"

Hornswoggle: to embarrass, disconcert, or confuse; e.g.: "I'll be hornswaggled!"

Consarn: the entirety of something, also a curse word.

Dumbfungled: all used up; e.g.: "This claim is dumbfungled! There's no gold left!"

Bonanza: a mine with lots of gold.

Borrasca: a mine with no gold.

Baby buggy: wheel barrow.

Muck: to dig with a shovel.

Powder monkey: a miner who used dynamite to make holes.

Johnny Newcome: a miner new to camp.

Blackjack and saw bosom: coffee and bacon.

Paydirt: land rich in gold.

Panned out: if they had found gold while sifting through dirt with a mining pan, then things had "panned out."

Flash in the pan: something shiny in pan that turned out to be nothing, or just a small piece of gold.

Stake a claim: claim a piece of land as your own as a place to  search for gold, must stake the land with wooden stakes when you arrive.

The day could also be spent watching films such as The Treasure of Sierra Madre, or old Western films starring Gabby Hayes. A visit to the Sutter's Mill replica and the Gold Discovery and Visitor Center in Marshall Gold Discovery State Park could also be planned. The days' Facebook page could also be explored.

Source

[fatehbaz]

What it meant to "do geology" in Hutton's time was to apply lessons of textual hermeneutics usually reserved for scripture [...] to the landscape. Geology was itself textual. Rocks were marks made by invisible processes that could be deciphered. Doing geology was a kind of reading, then, which existed in a dialectical relationship with writing. In The Theory of the Earth from 1788, Hutton wrote a new history of the earth as a [...] system [...]. Only a few kilometers away from Hutton’s unconformity [the geological site at Isle of Arran in Scotland that inspired his writing], [...] stands the remains of the Shell bitumen refinery [closed since 1986] as it sinks into the Atlantic Ocean. [...] As Hutton thought, being in a place is a hermeneutic practice. [...] [T]he Shell refinery at Ardrossan is a ruin of that machine, one whose great material derangements have defined the world since Hutton. [...]

The Shell Transport and Trading Company [now the well-known global oil company] was created in the Netherlands East Indies in 1897. The company’s first oil wells and refineries were in east Borneo [...]. The oil was taken by puncturing wells into subterranean deposits of a Bornean or Sumatran landscape, and then transported into an ever-expanding global network of oil depots at ports [...] at Singapore, then Chennai, and through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean. [...] The oil in these networks were Bornean and Sumatran landscapes on the move. Combustion engines burnt those landscapes. Machinery was lubricated by them. They illuminated the night as candlelight. [...] The Dutch East Indies was the new land of untapped promise in that multi-polar world of capitalist competition. British and Dutch colonial prospectors scoured the forests, rivers, and coasts of Borneo [...]. Marcus Samuel, the British founder of the Shell Transport and Trading Company, as his biographer [...] put it, was “mesmerized by oil, and by the vision of commanding oil all along the line from production to distribution, from the bowels of the earth to the laps of the Orient.” [...]

---

Shell emerged from a Victorian era fascination with shells.

In the 1830s, Marcus Samuel Sr. created a seashell import business in Houndsditch, London. The shells were used for decorating the covers of curio boxes. Sometimes, the boxes also contained miniature sculptures, also made from shells, of food and foliage, hybridizing oceanic and terrestrial life forms. Wealthy shell enthusiasts would sometimes apply shells to grottos attached to their houses. As British merchant vessels expanded into east Asia after the dissolution of the East India Company’s monopoly on trade in 1833, and the establishment of ports at Singapore and Hong Kong in 1824 and 1842, the import of exotic shells expanded.

Seashells from east Asia represented the oceanic expanse of British imperialism and a way to bring distant places near, not only the horizontal networks of the empire but also its oceanic depths.

---

The fashion for shells was also about telling new histories. The presence of shells, the pecten, or scallop, was a familiar bivalve icon in cultures on the northern edge of the Mediterranean. Aphrodite, for example, was said to have emerged from a scallop shell. Minerva was associated with scallops. Niches in public buildings and fountains in the Roman empire often contained scallop motifs. St. James, the patron saint of Spain, was represented by a scallop shell [...]. The pecten motif circulated throughout medieval European coats of arms, even in Britain. In 1898, when the Gallery of Palaeontology, Comparative Anatomy, and Anthropology was opened in Paris’s Museum of Natural History - only two years after the first test well was drilled in Borneo at the Black Spot - the building’s architect, Ferdinand Dutert, ornamented the entrance with pecten shell reliefs. In effect, Dutert designed the building so that one entered through scallop shells and into the galleries where George Cuvier’s vision of the evolution of life forms was displayed [...]. But it was also a symbol for the transition between an aquatic form of life and terrestrial animals. Perhaps it is apposite that the scallop is structured by a hinge which allows its two valves to rotate. [...] Pectens also thrive in the between space of shallow coastal waters that connects land with the depths of the ocean. [...] They flourish in architectural imagery, in the mind, and as the logo of one of the largest ever fossil fuel companies. [...]

---

In the 1890s, Marcus Samuel Jr. transitioned from his father’s business selling imported seashells to petroleum.

When he adopted the name Shell Transport and Trading Company in 1897, Samuel would likely have known that the natural history of bivalves was entwined with the natural history of fossil fuels. Bivalves underwent an impressive period of diversification in the Carboniferous period, a period that was first named by William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822 to identify coal bearing strata. In other words, the same period in earth’s history that produced the Black Spot that Samuel’s engineers were seeking to extract from Dayak land was also the period that produced the pecten shells that he named his company after. Even the black fossilized leaves that miners regularly encountered in coal seams sometimes contained fossilized bivalve shells.

The Shell logo was a materialized cosmology, or [...] a cosmogram.

Cosmograms are objects that attempt to represent the order of the cosmos; they are snapshots of what is. The pecten’s effectiveness as a cosmogram was its pivot, to hinge, between spaces and times: it brought the deep history of the earth into the present; the Black Spot with Mediterranean imaginaries of the bivalve; the subterranean space of liquid oil with the surface. The history of the earth was made legible as an energetic, even a pyrotechnical force. The pecten represented fire, illumination, and certainly, power. [...] If coal required tunnelling, smashing, and breaking the ground, petroleum was piped liquid that streamed through a drilled hole. [...] In 1899, Samuel presented a paper to the Society of Arts in which he outlined his vision of “liquid fuel.” [...] Ardrossan is a ruin of that fantasy of a free flowing fossil fuel world. [...] At Ardrossan, that liquid cosmology is disintegrating.

---

All text above by: Adam Bobbette. "Shells and Shell". e-flux Architecture (Accumulation series). November 2023. At: e-flux dot com slash architecture/accumulation/553455/shells-and-shell/ [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticisms purposes.]

[ofliterarynature]

TBR TAKEDOWN: Week 17 (September 22)

TLDR: I have too many unread books, and I’m asking tumblr to help me downsize. Pick one or none - it doesn't have to be something you've read, just the one you think sounds the worst! Comments and reblogs welcome, book descriptions below the cut. See my pinned post for more info.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

A World Without Heroes by Brandon Mull

Jason Walker has often wished his life could be a bit less predictable--until a routine day at the zoo ends with Jason suddenly transporting from the hippo tank to a place unlike anything he's ever seen. In the past, the people of Lyrian welcomed visitors from the Beyond, but attitudes have changed since the wizard emperor Maldor rose to power. The brave resistors who opposed the emperor have been bought off or broken, leaving a realm where fear and suspicion prevail.

In his search for a way home, Jason meets Rachel, who was also mysteriously drawn to Lyrian from our world. With the help of a few scattered rebels, Jason and Rachel become entangled in a quest to piece together the word of power that can destroy the emperor, and learn that their best hope to find a way home will be to save this world without heroes.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

A bold translation of Nobel Prize-winner Herman Hesse's most inspirational and beloved work, which was nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

Hesse's famous and influential novel, Siddartha, is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922. Set in India, Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin's search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, through the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation.

[gothicxreylover]

𝕯𝖆𝖞 3

𝕶𝖎𝖓𝖐𝖙𝖔𝖇𝖊𝖗

𝕹𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖔𝖓 𝕮𝖆𝖒𝖕𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖑 𝖝 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗

⋆༺𓆩𓋹𓆪༻⋆ ⋆༺𓆩𓋹𓆪༻⋆

⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧

Tw! This contains Hate sex (not really sex but..), slapping (sexually), mean words, drooling, slight public sex, and unfinished orgasm (reader), masturbation, and cliffhanger? (didn't know how to end it haha)

⛧°。 ⋆༺♱༻⋆。 °⛧ ⛧°。 ⋆༺♱༻⋆。 °⛧

You weren't a very reliable person during matches like these. Specifically ranked matches. You were horrible at kiting, supporting, and rescuing the only thing you were good at was just decoding. Other players that you matched with frequently learned how horrible you were and tried to prevent matching with you at all times.

Sometimes even hunters feel pity for you, giving you a chance of survival and dungeon once in a while. One day while in a match you stuck to the only thing you were good and stayed away when it came to supporting it rescuing.

Footsteps approached you and two sets of hands helped decode from your left side. This was the last chiper and your teammate was barely holding the hunter off. When the chiper was primed the roughed gloves immediately shoved you to the wall. “You better not screw this up! I swear every time I match with you, you ruin everything.” The prospector said as he tightened his hand on your shoulders.

He moved closer to your ear letting his raspy voice talk and degrade you. Before you knew it his hands were tugging your pants off while rubbing your shoulder.

“Wh-What are you doing? This is sinful!” You exclaimed, his hand shoved you to the wall again hinting at you to shut up. “ shut your mouth and enjoy you pathetic loser. You should be lucky I'm doing this to you.” He tugged one of his gloves off with his mouth and reached for your private area.

He bent you over the chiper machine that was vibrating giving you extra pleasure. His hand started to finger/ jerk you off quickly making you let out a quiet moan. You slapped your hand on to your mouth still noticing that you were in public. You didn't want to get caught by one of your teammates but yet this fingers felt so good.

Drool started to come out of your mouth loving the way his thick fingers your fingering/ jerking you off. You felt like you were going to cum very quickly making you hold the crate that the chiper machine was on tightly.

Soon his fingers left you and finally popped chiper, you cried out weakly as your orgasm went away. You looked up at him to see his stupid smirk, he slapped your ass and left to get to the exit gate. You quickly pulled up your pants and made your way to the exit gate.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

The first time I visited Peehee Mu’huh, mining for lithium had already begun.

I was there in the fall of 2023 as part of my work with People of Red Mountain, descendants of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribe who lead the movement against extraction on this sacred landscape. We gathered at the valley in northern Nevada, known as Thacker Pass, to commemorate the massacre of 31 Paiute-Shoshone people there by the U.S. Cavalry on Sept. 12, 1865.

To dig up every pound of lithium, the mine will remove thousands of pounds of rock, soil, and other minerals, most of which will not be used and are considered waste.

That’s the secret of mining: It requires significant space to dump its byproducts.

Mine waste is no longer in the forefront for the environmental movement as it was when coal and nuclear power had their heyday, but it remains a key issue activists and scholars should be following. At Thacker Pass the 1,300 acres of wasteland will occupy the space indefinitely. Arsenic, antimony, and other hazards from the refining process to get lithium from the clay will pile up in this backfill pit and leach into the soils, watersheds, and air.

Historically miners have faced minimal oversight. Any individual could venture onto public lands and stake a claim to the minerals they contained — rights to occupy the land were established merely by proving a mineral’s presence and getting there first. Unlike loggers on public land, miners don’t pay any royalties; mine leases on public lands cost as little as $3 dollars per acre.

You might be forgiven for thinking this scenario sounds like something out of the 1800s prospector and ‘49ers era — and in fact, it is. Mining law was last meaningfully legislated under the 1872 General Mining Act.

Just as with the Black Hills gold rush in the Dakota Territory and those in Oregon and California, mine fervor during the gold and silver rushes that white settlers led on the red-colored mountains of Paiute-Shoshone lands in the 1850s-60s was violent and met by Indigenous resistance.

That resistance was crushed. Many noncombatants were killed and others forcibly displaced to Washington; the destruction continued for decades and hasn’t stopped yet.

Today the land base of the Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock peoples of the area — collectively known as Atsawkoodakuh wyh Nuwu or Red Mountain Dwellers — is permeated by both abandoned and active mines. Gold and tungsten mining waned in the early to mid-1900s, but then companies started extracting uranium and mercury at the McDermitt and Cordero mines across the road from Fort McDermitt. According to Department of the Interior archives, this was the nation’s largest mercury mine from the 1930s to the 1970s. After the Cordero mine closed, crews spread arsenic-contaminated waste from the mine around the town and reservation as a fill dirt. The region was later declared a Superfund site, and the contaminants were removed between 2009 and 2013.

But the toxic waste caused decades of harm in the community before that removal. In a brazen environmental injustice, many Tribal members who worked there perished of cancer. Sunoco and Barrick Gold, the companies that exploited the quicksilver lode, simply “declined” the EPA’s order to clean up the area and escaped culpability.

Now the sacred landscape of Peehee Mu’huh will become the country’s largest lithium bounty.

A new bill before Congress aims to strip away even the baby-steps reform of Rosemont. The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act (HR2925) passed the House in May and awaits Senate approval (S1281). One would assume a bipartisan effort with such a name would offer progress, but the bill guts Rosemont by removing the requirement of claimants to prove minerals before using and dumping waste on public land.

A competing bill, the Green Energy Minerals Reform Act, would introduce requirements such as paying mineral royalties and funding cleanup — basic protections that should have already been in force. Congress held hearings about this proposed legislation in late 2023, but it has not moved forward since.

[otakusparkle]

Identity V Ashes Of Memories Part 2 Begin

Week 1

- After maintenance in November 2, Players can immediately follow Alice to the Kreiburg Race Course to continue the story

- After the maintenance, players will also received 10x Essences for season 29 Essence 1

- New season Essences

- New Character (Fool's Gold available in shop at November 9)

- New Map (Kreiburg Race Course)

- Exclusive mode

- Public Map

- New play mode (Horse race)

Week 2

Forest Of Sin - Rekindling Embers

1. The all-server cooperative battle mode "Darkwood Forest" has started, and players can cooperate in this play mode to fight against the hunter "Fool's Gold".

2. This mode is divided into four stages:

- Struggle

- Pain

- Madness

- Delusion.

The difficulty level gradually increases. As the difficulty level increases, unstable areas gradually increase on the Darkwood Forest map. And in the stage of delusion, it will continue to collapse, so try to avoid it wisely.

3. You can earn event coins by participating in this event.

>Note<

*If you clear the current stage, you can unlock the next stage; the stage of Delusion will be released at 10AM on November 10th, and players who have cleared the stage of madness can form a team and participate!

*In the [Struggle], [Pain], and [Crazy] stages, if 2 or more people escape, the game is considered cleared. On the other hand, to clear the [Delusion] stage, players needs to escape for 3 or more people.

*During this mode, Hunter "Fool's Gold" is AI and may use [Blink] or [Excitement] traits.

Team Rules

Players can recruit or form their own teams to take on ``Fool's Gold'' in the Forest of Sin. [Struggle] allows you to enter solo, and the system will match you with an AI companion. [Pain] [Insanity] [Delusion] requires participation in a team of 4 people, players can match up with random teammates or to form a team.

Banned Characters

In this mode, the use of Priestess and Thief is prohibited.

Bonuses

Collect coins from event and earn many bonuses

- Prospector S-Tier Costume

- Entomologist A-Tier Costume

- Fool's Gold A-Tier Accessories

- Icon and Frame

- Emote (Novelist, Journalist, Composer)

- Dishes (White Coffee, Stewed Eggs (Survivor), Fresh Mulberries (Hunter))

- Furniture

- Limited tag

[get-back-homeward]

The chapter of Royston Ellis meeting the Beatles is so wild.

He first hits on George at the Jacaranda. George responds to this with a casual “oh, you’d love my friends” and brings him to Gambier Terrace:

Also dropping into the Gambier Terrace pit was a special guest, Royston Ellis, “King of the Beatniks.” The bearded bard, who featured in TV documentaries and press articles whenever an offbeat teenage angle was needed, was in Liverpool to read his poetry at the university on June 24/25, and he swiftly found himself drawn into the Beatles’ company. The conduit was George, who (with nothing else to do while John, Stu and Paul were in school) was hanging around the Jac when the wandering coffee-bar poet traipsed in, drawn by hip radar to “the happening place.” Avowedly “trying everything,” Ellis was an active bisexual in this period of his life and he took an immediate fancy to George: “He looked fabulous with his long hair and matelot-style striped T-shirt, very modern, which is why I deliberately spoke to him. I was nineteen and he was seventeen and we clicked right away.”15

George took Ellis, his typewriter and his duffel bag back to Gambier Terrace to meet John and Stu. A rapport was quickly established and Ellis was invited to “crash” for a few days—yet another occupant for the filthy back room.

Then Ellis hits it off with John and Stu and wants them as a backing band:

Ellis says he developed a particular rapport with John and Stuart and that they discussed poetry, art and London. When he left, they spoke of doing it again sometime: “We were talking about how I wanted a band to come to London and back me on my Rocketry performances, and they were thrilled at the idea.” Art school studies finished the following Friday, July 1, marking the end of Stu’s fourth year and John’s third and last because the college was waving him goodbye. The exam results, when they came through on August 1, were just as expected: John failed and was out, Stuart passed the NDD, for which he received a certificate. The option was there for him to do a fifth year and attain the highest available qualification, the Art Teacher’s Diploma (ATD), akin to a degree and entitling him to become a teacher … but both he and John were pondering a period as prospectors, and doing something again with Ellis was a definite possibility.

So much so, Ellis is responsible for the first* two mentions of the band in the newspaper:

As for Ellis, so much was he enthused by the possibility of appearing with them again that he soon got the Beatles their first mention in a music paper. It was the July 9 edition of Record and Show Mirror, where a supercilious little article about “the bearded sage of the coffee bars” ended “he’s thinking of bringing down to London a Liverpool group which he considers is most in accord with his poetry. Name of the group? ‘The Beetles’”

….A born publicist, Royston Ellis knew how to manipulate a follow-up, writing a letter for publication that clarified a point in the first. He expressed his intention to find a group that would join him on TV appearances with Bert Weedon and the Shadows, and reiterated, “For some time I have been searching for a group to use regularly, and I feel that the ‘Beetles’ (most of them are Liverpool ex-art students) fill the bill.”

John and Stu decide to go to London on their own to join Ellis…but then chicken out:

By July 10, at the end of his three-year art school vacation, John had arrived at a key decision in his life: he would try to earn his living from the guitar. “I became a professional musician the day I got a red letter from the art college saying ‘Don’t bother coming back next September,’ ” he later said.31 Cyn would remember, “John decided that this [music] was very definitely the life for him. All the ideas that everyone else had for him of making an impact on the art world faded into the back of beyond with incredible rapidity, and with almost no regret at all. Aunt Mimi was distraught. Her view of his future couldn’t have been blacker at that time.”32

These events coinciding, it seems John and Stu decided to head south and hang out with Royston Ellis. Allan Williams is emphatic on the matter: he says John and Stu “split the Beatles and went down to London.”33 Norman Chapman would remember Stu asking him for a lift through the Mersey Tunnel one day so he (or he and John) could hitchhike to London—“They wanted to go down to London and become involved in this poetry-music scene.” Beat poets led a nomadic life by definition. Ellis lived for periods in all sorts of places, but his main base was still his parents’ house, at 31 Clonard Way, Hatch End, Pinner, Middlesex, a pleasant detached villa with the name Denecroft. This was the address he gave John while staying at Gambier Terrace. When Ellis arrived home one day his mother said he’d missed a visit from his “beatnik friends from Liverpool.” He never knew how many or who had come, but—as insane as it appears—John and Stu (and/or as Ellis always thought—hoped—George) had hitched the best part of two hundred miles, taken the trouble of locating his house in leafy Metroland, not stayed or left a message and then gone home again, never returning or making further contact. It makes no sense, but there it sits, illogical and incomplete.

Allan Williams remembers them being “back in Liverpool within a week, because it didn’t work out,” at which point the Beatles “reformed” as if they’d never been away. With bookings only every Saturday, it’s conceivable they did all this without missing one, and perhaps that was always the intention. However, while three independent witnesses (Ellis, Williams and Chapman) all remember something happening, none of the Beatles ever mentioned it—though in their interviews they talked with candor about everything. So it must remain in doubt, an intriguing puzzle unlikely to be solved.

There are two additional curiosities that may or may not be incidental. One is that, in the last days of July, a group of Liverpool art school students, apparently including John and Stu, went to London (or tried to go) to see a Picasso exhibition at the Tate Gallery. Second, and most fascinatingly, a set of photographs taken at this very time (mid-July 1960) in Stu and John’s studio-bedroom-slum at 3 Gambier Terrace includes several people they knew but not John and Stu themselves—perhaps because they were on the Hatch End trip. It was published on July 24 in the national Sunday rag the People in a sensation-splash headlined THIS IS THE BEATNIK HORROR. It’s as if a man on a flaming pie was pointing down at Flat 3, Hillary Mansions, Gambier Terrace, Liverpool 1. In six months, three Beatles moved in and the fourth was hanging out, the nation’s best-known beat poet had come here to get them high, and now, when a Fleet Street journalist and photographer were looking to substantiate a load of old tosh about dirty beatniks—reportage that could have been cooked up anywhere in the country—they landed in Stu and John’s room.34

Though hugely amusing, the feature had one unfortunate side-effect: because the address was given (a “three-roomed flat in decaying Gambier Terrace in Liverpool”) and some of the occupants (“well-educated youngsters”) were named, the landlord gave the tenant, Rod Murray, notice to quit. On August 15, everyone—Rod, Diz, Ducky, Stuart, John and sundry other bodies who’d joined them—would be out on the street.

—Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, Ch 15 (May 31–Aug 15, 1960)

And Lewisohn is just like yup nothing to see.

So what the hell happened here? Was it just a school trip? Or was it a deliberate split?

[scotianostra]

On September 28th 1864 Charles Murray,, a poet who wrote in the Doric dialect of Scots, was born at Alford, Aberdeenshire.

Though easily the best known and most popular Scots poet of the period from 1910 till the 1960s, Charles Murray’s literary output was modest. Though there was nothing amateur in his approach to his poetry, Murray was not a professional literary man and had to compose in the time he could spare from a busy working life first as prospector and mine manager, then as a senior colonial civil servant, in the newly created Union of South Africa.

In 1969, twenty-eight years after Murray’s death, poems which had not appeared in book form during his lifetime were published as The Last Poems, with Preface and Notes by Alexander Keith.

Finally in 1979, Murray’s friend, the novelist Nan Shepherd, edited Hamewith: the complete poems of Charles Murray. These publications were supported by the Charles Murray Memorial Fund.

Gin I Was God

Gin I was God, sittin' up there abeen,

Weariet nae doot noo a' my darg was deen,

Deaved wi' the harps an' hymns oonendin' ringin',

To some clood-edge I'd daunder furth an', feth,

Look ower an' watch hoo things were gaun aneth.

Syne, gin I saw hoo men I'd made mysel'

Had startit in to pooshan, sheet an' fell,

To reive an' rape, an' fairly mak' a hell

O' my braw birlin' Earth, - a hale week's wark -

I'd cast my coat again, rowe up my sark,

An', or they'd time to lench a second ark.

Tak' back my word an' sen' anither spate,

Droon oot the hale hypothec, dicht the sklate,

Own my mistak', an', aince I'd cleared the brod,

Start a'thing ower again, gin I was God.

Meaning of unusual words:

gin=if

darg was deen=day's work was done

deaved=deafened

oonendin'=unending

feth=faith

syne=soon

pooshan, sheet an' fell=poison, shoot and kill

reive=thieve

birlin'=spinning

rowe up my sark=pull up my shirt

lench=launch

dicht the sklate=wipe the slate clean

brod=brood

[absmarchive]

Why we should learn from Mexican feminists

[wannab-urs]

The Spreadsheet Digest | Vol 30

Howdy folks :)

Welcome to the THIRTIETH Spreadsheet Digest!!

I started reading a few series this week, and I'm not putting them on the spreadsheet til I've finished them; so, if I told you I'm reading your fic but it's not here, that's why. Eleven fics this week (Dieter, Joel, Din, Ezra, Javi P, and a Marcus P/Din/Reader)!

Fic Rec Masterlist | My Masterlist | My Kofi

Recs Below The Pedge

In Fiction - Dieter one shot by @sin-djarin

Summary: Dieter comes to bed. Tags: Established relationship, mentions of self doubt, no physical description of reader, no dialogue, no use of y/n. Thoughts: This was so sweet. I just want to hold him and pet his hair, fr.

In Reality - Dieter one shot by @sin-djarin

Summary: Dieter comes home for Christmas. Tags: Established relationship, masturbation (M), Dieter's self deprecation, no physical description of reader, no use of y/n. Thoughts: I'm just extremely obsessed with the nailing of Dieter's characterization here. He's a little gross and sad, but it's endearing. Poor baby can't keep his phone charged to save his life. And I love how reader just like... knows he's a mess and is okay with it. It's a little bittersweet? In a way that I adore.

O, Christmas Tree - Dieter one shot by @covetyou

Summary: As PA to Dieter Bravo, you were used to the strange, unusual and downright weird. What you weren't used to was taking in a shipment of - what? And how many? Tags: sex toys (so many butt plugs), Dieter being a menace to his PA, no smut, pure silliness. Thoughts: This is so delightfully silly. And they do kind of look like christmas trees.

The hat stays on - Joel one shot by @theywhowriteandknowthings

Summary: Hooking up with a cowboy in a bar bathroom... kind of. Tags: sub/dom dynamics, Sub!Joel, Switch!Joel, Public sex, Bathroom Sex, Squirting, orgasm denial(mention). Purely Porn with no Plot. Thoughts: I love these lil plot twist fics, I love cowboy hat joel, I love sub/switch!Joel, I love this.

To Know the Light - Din one shot by @burntheedges

Summary: to go in the dark with a light is to know the light. Tags: fluff, a teensy bit of angst, introspection, winter, food mention, reader has no description, gn!reader Thoughts: Din's internal struggle with removing the helmet is such a fascinating aspect of his character, and I think you did a beautiful job of capturing it here. I thought the imagery, the characterization, and the story telling in general here was just gorgeous.

Killshot - Ezra series by @magpiepills

Summary: A lonesome prospector comes face to face with a dangerous stranger. What happens when you can’t resist his charm? Tags: SMUT, PIV, fingering, oral (m&f receiving) pet names, spanking, dub con, angst, anal play, deep throating, cum eating, thigh riding, dirty talk, double penetration, toys, teasing, no use of y/n, no physical description of reader. Thoughts: This shit had me YELLING!!! Dirty Dog Ezra in full force here. I am still shook and I read this like 4 days ago.

Dare to Surrender - Javi P series by @auteurdelabre

Summary: “First to come loses.” You can’t stand Javier Pena but when Steve Murphy makes an off-hand remark that gets both you and Javier’s competitive sides going, there’s no telling how far you’ll go. Tags: Office Sex, Enemies to Lovers, Blow Jobs, Office Blow Jobs, Face-Fucking, Dare, Co-workers, soft!javi p, Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, Pet Names, Jealous!Javier Peña, Phone Sex, Jealousy, Steve Murphy cockblock, Desk Sex, No Pregnancy, Banter, Bonding, Bets & Wagers, Vaginal Fingering, Fingerfucking, Finger Sucking, hey we said no kissing, he falls first, no protection, From Sex to Love, Rough Sex, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Semi-Public Sex, P in V sex, Sweet!Javi, Nicknames Thoughts: I loved this storyyyyy. Javi was so pathetically in love with her and so bad at saying it. Brad sucks, btw, but I love how jealous he made Javi. P.S if you like the whole bet concept + Javi P check out Go Ahead I Dare Ya. It's a slightly different premise, but so very good.

Handsome, Dirty, Rich - Joel one shot by @pedgito

Summary: the rich father of your best friend, sarah — joel miller, was a mystery to you until one day he isn't and you quickly find that your interest in him isn't one-sided. Tags: no use of y/n, au/no outbreak, bfd!joel, ceo!joel, mentions of reader growing up poor/absent parents (joel is ridiculously loaded, it's fic y'all let me live lol), sneaking around, age gap (not explicitly specified, but reader is in final year of college and joel is probs late 40s/50s), vacations, gift-giving, unprotected piv, come swallowing, daddy issues if you squint, one (1) pussy slap, oral (f receiving), semi-public fucking Thoughts: The buildup was immaculate AGH. And I am obsessed with the kind of not quite happy ending? Part 2 maybe?

Comfort, Despite the Storm - Joel one shot by @marisferasiop

Summary: Joel's neighbor (you) is the town archivist and brings him a present on his birthday (with a side of teasing). Later, after waking from his own nightmares, he finds you sleepless on your porch during a storm and you take comfort in one another. Tags: fluff, smut, nightmares, alcohol, p in v sex, oral m receiving Thoughts: Love a lil continuous hookup situation. I adore how they get together in this and how reader takes the lead in the situation. And like the fic overall is sweet and flirty, but that smut is hot.

Misfire - Dieter one shot by @qveerthe0ry

Summary: Dieter gets waxed for a role and gets a little too excited. Tags: dubious consent, body hair waxing, pain kink, humiliation kink (kinda), subby!Dieter, ruined orgasm, coming untouched, hands-free orgasm, reader does not engage in sex acts, mentions of alcohol, mentions of drug use, accidental exhibitionism, accidental voyeurism Thoughts: Pathetic, whiny, whimpering, humiliation kink Dieter? Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Perfection. And if you want a version where reader plays along instead of ignoring him read that here.

Closure - Marcus P/Din one shot by @javier-pena

Summary: Marcus, Din and you used to be best friends. Now you're on opposite sides of the law with a decade worth of grudges between you. But hate can quickly become something else ... Tags: angst | canon-typical violence | mentions of food and alcohol and smoking | they’re all mean to each other and they have a difficult relationship | (a lot of) dirty talk (by my standards) | slight power imbalance | reader has hair that can be grabbed | threesome m/f/(m) (kinda) | ecouteurism | voyeurism | exhibitionism | a bit of edging | fingering | competitiveness | (unprotected) piv sex | creampie | a tiny, tiny bit of degradation Thoughts: Marcus and Din is a pairing I truly never thought I would see, but I am obsessed with this pairing. The way their personalities mesh is just stunning. I love the characterization of all three of them. I'm not usually one to read Din AUs where he's not some sort of Mandalorian, but I truly could not resist reading this. Everything about this fic was amazing. Reader's story, Marcus and Din's relationship, the setting, everything was just so good AHGHGGH.

--------------

This week I posted:

Scotty Doesn't Know - a Dieter one shot

Summary: Scotty doesn't know you're hooking up with Dieter Tags: songfic, smut, infidelity, dieter is a loser, scotty doesn't really deserve this he's just annoying, crack taken seriously, porn with the barest of plots, barely edited. WC: 2.8k

---------------

Happy Reading!

[rabbitcruiser]

Whitehorse, YT (No. 1)

Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon, and the largest city in Northern Canada. It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1426 (Historic Mile 918) on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which rises in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in Alaska. The city was named after the White Horse Rapids for their resemblance to the mane of a white horse, near Miles Canyon, before the river was dammed.

Because of the city's location in the Whitehorse valley and relative proximity to the Pacific Ocean, the climate is milder than comparable northern communities such as Yellowknife. At this latitude, winter days are short and summer days have up to about 19 hours of daylight. Whitehorse, as reported by Guinness World Records, is the city with the least air pollution in the world.

As of the 2021 Canadian census, the population was 28,201 within city boundaries and 31,913 in the census agglomeration. These figures represent approximately 70 and 79 percent, respectively, of the entire population of Yukon.

Source: Wikipedia

[fatehbaz]

Hal Langfur's Adrift on an Inland Sea: Misinformation and the Limits of Empire in the Brazilian Backlands sheds valuable light on spaces and processes in the history of colonial Brazil that have been overlooked and understudied, namely those taking place in internal frontier zones - the sertões, or backlands, between and beyond the enclaves governed by Portuguese rule, unstable and unincorporated spaces [...]. Langfur argues that [...] Lisbon made increasingly assertive efforts to survey and establish control over isolated zones after 1750 but that these failed such that the Portuguese imperial state found itself “adrift on an inland sea.” [...]

[T]he axis on which this enterprise fails is information. People made up the infrastructures of communication and data transmission that the Portuguese Empire endeavored to construct and deploy in order to render its domains governable and ever more profitable, but these people had purposes of their own.

The probing tentacles of imperial intelligence gathering met instead with the confusion of rumors, distortions, inflated claims, conflicting reports, disputed facts, and fantasies. [...]

---

[Langfur] bring[s] into the conversation [...] accounts of several forays between 1750 and 1820 into the backlands of Minas Gerais [...]. These took place against the exhaustion of the mineral deposits that had fueled the gold rush decades earlier in Minas Gerais and the crown’s relentless pursuit of new deposits that could keep up the flow of alluvial wealth. While these projects foundered, ultimately, new forms of extraction in the form of slave-based export agriculture (coffee) would take their place. [...] [T]he first expedition was led by an ambitious merchant named Inácio Correia Pamplona in the late 1760s who commissioned a scribe to record a diary and compose poems praising his attempts to find gold and subdue Indians and thus extend the empire’s territorial dominion. While Pamplona’s actual accomplishments fell short of the Herculean feats described [...], he was able to cash in his narrative for favors and privileges that made him one of the largest landholders in the captaincy. [...]

The third [expedition] involved José Vieira Couto, a crown-appointed mineralogist, who was appointed to use his scientific expertise to investigate reports of diamond strikes in Western Minas Gerais, particularly of a famed free Black prospector known as Isidoro de Amorim Pereira [...]. The hoped-for diamonds never materialized but Couto [...] deployed a discourse of scientific rigor in an attempt to recast his mission and produce knowledge that would allow the crown to absorb and exploit the territory. [...] Wied established himself as an authority with unrivaled knowledge of Botocudo peoples for an international reading public; his accounts [...] presented the Botocuda as exotic primitives, incommensurable with “civilized society,” [...].

---

If these expeditions [...] did not accomplish what the colonial state intended, this was, Langfur argues, a result of the capacity of diverse inland actors to divert, co-opt, and deceive authorities. [...] [Langfur's study] turns on an emphasis of the unacknowledged agency of a variety of marginalized peoples who acted as knowledge brokers: indigenous communities, both enslaved and free Afro-Brazilians, itinerant poor, and others deemed vagabonds and criminals: “the Indigeneous inhabitants separating the colony’s burgeoning capital from its mining heartland retained considerable say over the crown’s ability to impose its sovereign dominion. They largely determined what could be known, what remained a mystery, what could be accomplished, and what was beyond reach in this strategic mountainous expanse” (p. 150).

These frontier informants generated an “informational alchemy,” a mix of fantasy, fabrication, concealment, and contradictory reports [...].

How much information does an empire really require to run? Aren’t fantasies and lies always part of its infrastructures? Is all misinformation of a kind, or what specific misinformation carries with it not only the limits but also failures of empire? Put differently: How to judge the value and distribution of information versus that of representation in the running of an empire? What does the category of information itself conceal? [...] [A] horizon of intelligibility [...] is ultimately given by the Portuguese colonial state, so that the work of the information brokers is both possibly overstated and yet curiously limited, measured always in the terms set out by colonizing projects. [...] [I]n what ways [...] [do] such limits continue to bleed through once absorbed into the fabric of writing, determining the very grid of intelligibility?

---

All text above by: Adriana Johnson. "Review of Langfur, Hal. Adrift on an Inland Sea: Misinformation and the Limits of Empire in the Brazilian Backlands". H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. February 2024. Published by H-Net online at: h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=59701. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[seven-oomen]

No but seriously I cannot get the idea of the clones as space cowboys out of my head.

So here's an idea I have to continue the saga of Cal Kestis and the clones.

After the clone wars end, the nightmare doesn't fully end for the clones. They don't have any rights, they're not considered citizens, they only have each other as a people, and public opinion of them isn't very high.

Mandalore doesn't want them. They're not welcome on many planets, despite the clones giving everything to protect them.

Sure Palpatine is dead, order 66 has been stopped in its tracks. And the jedi order, while dealing with horrendous public opinion, still stands.

But then there's the Koboh system, largely unexplored and uninhabited except by a few prospectors and raiders. As long as you contribute, you're welcome there.

So what do many clones do? They move to Koboh.

Obi-Wan and Cody take Cal (12 years old at that point) and bring him to Koboh. Several members of the 212th like Waxer, Boil, and Wooley went with them. Along with the bad batch (hunter, crosshair, tech, wrecker, echo, and 12 year old Omega), Fives (because he's not leaving his Podtwin Echo), Jango & Boba Fett, Bly & Aayla Secura, Shaak Ti and several cadets of varying ages, Plo Koon and his wolf pack, Commander Mayday, and Greez Dritus.

Together with Doma they build the Ramblers Reach outpost to a lively little town where the community thrives.

Meanwhile Fox escapes to Alderaan with his corrie brothers. And he gets to live out his life with the Organas and their adopted daughter, who calls Fox buir.

Rex lives his life on Naboo, aiding Padmé in the fight for clone rights in the senate and setting up a system where he finds suitable planets for his vods to inhabit.

Anakin and Padmé are still married, they live on Naboo with the twins, Luke & Leia, and with Ahsoka. Who is adopted into the family as Anakin's little sister. Anakin never goes Darkside.

Meanwhile Cal, Boba, and Omega live out there best lives on Koboh creating mayhem and being around so many of their bavodu'e. The sheer chaos these three can create is known planet wide.

Obi-Wan and Cody enjoy their married life. Cody, along with several ex commanders and Crosshair have taken the responsibility of town protection on them.

Hunter hunts with Mosey when he can.

Wrecker watches the gremlin triplets, which doesn't really work because they rope him into things. But it's still better than when Fives watches them. We do not talk about the Rancor incident.

Bly & Aayla marry and have a few children of their own.

And that's what I have for now..it's almost 2 am, I need sleep.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/14-10/15/2024: JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and HOLOCAUST 2000

For these two days I chose two Italian movies that featured the word "holocaust", end of the world scenarios, primordial caves, gross awkward sex, and Massimo Foschi. If you think I put a lot of thought into this, you'd be wrong! But one of these movies was a lot better than I expected, and one was much weirder, so that's a net positive.

If you heard the title JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and the name Ruggero Deodato in the same sentence, you might fairly assume that the infamous Italian director made a second movie about a white Westerner fighting off man-eating primitives to capitalize on the notoriety of his name-making 1980 video nasty CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. But you would be wrong! Though to be fair, I'm not sure when his 1977 movie LAST CANNIBAL WORLD got that alternative title--like if it was for home video releases after 1980, or if JUNGLE HOLOCAUST really was Deodato's first "holocaust" title. I'm curious about the use of that word in exploitation movies in general; post-1980 genre films would certainly be trying to associate themselves with CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, but what meaning did it have for exploitation producers in the 1970s? Obviously it was enough for two different groups (Erre Cinematografica, and Titanus and The Rank Organization, respectively) would put out JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and HOLOCAUST 2000 the same year. I'm not even sure how to estimate the place the actual-Holocaust held in the public consciousness at the time; it wasn't even a lifetime away in the '70s, but we know how the events of past decades can suddenly, crazily seem like literally-ancient history to younger people. The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials took place in the mid-60s, which I mention just to say that Holocaust-related legal processes were ongoing for some time. Evidence of ongoing processing in the collective unconscious can be found in the nazploitation boom of 1976-77; MARATHON MAN was '76 and THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL was '78.. JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and HOLOCAUST 2000 have little or nothing to do with the events of WWII, but so I don't know if that I've added anything meaningful with this rant; I'm just curious about it.

Um anyway. JUNGLE HOLOCAUST is a much better movie than you probably think it is. Massimo Foschi plays an oil prospector who gets stranded in Malaysia and captured by cannibals, whereupon he forces cavewoman Me Me Lai to help him fight his way back to civilization. Of course, it bears all the hallmarks of its fairly-maligned genre--extreme racial caricatures, extreme rape, extreme animal cruelty, and extreme gut-munching--but it's also surprisingly good, if you can eat around that stuff. Foschi's stay in the cannibal caves is like a Boschian fever dream, beautifully photographed with a fascinating soundscape to match, and there's a certain subversive power in the way the gleeful cannibals dominate Foschi--and by proxy, the viewer. Sadly I haven't been able to remember who, but one critic pointed out that the cannibal movies (of which JUNGLE is only the second, though really the first recognizable one) are usually sun-drenched affairs, which makes the chiaroscuro imagery of the cave quite unusual.

It's also worth saying that Foschi really lives this adventure. I mean of course he wasn't really kidnapped by cannibals, but he really spends the whole movie nude or nearly so, really braved the hostile jungle with its leech-infested waters for the shoot, really eats everything from beetles to putrid offal, really spars with an angry toucan. In a way JUNGLE HOLOCAUST has more in common with some forms of experimental theater than it does with a regular old exploitation movie. It is the real deal, and I recommend it if you have the stomach for it.

HOLOCAUST 2000, on the other hand, is like, all crazy. This is going to be spoilery, but probably the best way to discuss this movie is to tease out how convoluted it is. Kirk Douglas plays entrepreneur Robert Caine who plans to open a nuclear power plant near a sacred cave in Israel, amid protests and prophecies of doom. Foschi plays a madman who tries to kill him, in one of a series of events suggesting that the power plant is going to trigger the apocalypse described in the Book of Revelations. The plant itself, which seems semi-sentient, is likened to the Biblical Beast of the Sea with all its destructive power, and there's a pretty fun dream sequence about this...but then there's a separate prophecy about how Caine's seed (ew!) will beget the Antichrist, which presumably comes about when he knocks up a girl reporter (Agostina Belli), who then starts acting more or less like Damien in THE OMEN. But then also there's the matter of Caine's androgynous adult son Angel (Simon Ward), who strangled his twin brother in the womb, and there's some hemming and hawing about which twin embodied goodness and which one embodied evil, for whatever reason. So there's sort of two Antichrists in this movie? I don't know. There's a lot going on.

I don't feel great about this, but I cannot avoid talking about the graphic sex scene between 30 year old Agostina Belli and Kirk Douglas, who is 61 and looks even older. We all know that the entertainment industry prefers to take "an old American fossil and put it next to some young rising star," as Sergio Martino put it; I'm forever thinking about Maggie Gyllenhaal losing a role because she was told she was too old to play Clint Eastwood's girlfriend. But even so, I think we rarely or never see naked Clint Eastwood in bed with his too-young costars, and HOLOCAUST 2000 offers the startling and protracted spectacle of Kirk Douglas's wrinkly, hairy, mottled old fingers roving over Agostina Belli's young, poreless flesh. It's really intense and I don't know how the audience is supposed to feel about it exactly; the dialog occasionally concedes that she's too young for him, but it really feels more like he's too old for HER, and the prophecies about his "seed" made you think, you know, a guy in his 60s might not be able to give a woman a very healthy baby. That's a thing, whether we talk about it or not. But I really started to wonder if it would change anything if there were always graphic sex scenes in movies that have a male lead who is 50+ and a love interest who is 20 years or more his junior. If viewers always had to see the guy's aged body pressed against the dramatically different-looking woman, it might be a helpful visual representation of how problematic these casting decisions are. Like unless the story is really focused on how two people in love overcome a gap in age/experience/health/etc--or unless the story is specifically about gerontophilia--people should either stop doing this, or be more frank about what they're proposing.