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callimara · 11 months

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Important PSA

Criticizing Israel is NOT antisemetism or an attack on Jewish people because

ISRAEL =/= ALL JEWS

And while I am not saying that there is no antisemitism because there is plenty of that too, this is not a case of that. But grouping all Jews together as Israeli and presenting them as a monolith erases their individuality and identity. It's like calling all Asian people Chinese, and that if you criticize China, then you hate all Asian people. It doesn't make sense.

I am so frustrated seeing people who are trying to raise awareness about Palestine be called antisemetic and disgusting by people who cannot perceive Jews and Muslims as anything but a monolith. That's the reason why so many people are having trouble distinguishing between Hamas and Palestinian civilians, because to them, they're all the same.

And that's why they don't see an issue with collective punishment.

And you know what? Palestine is NOT just the Jewish holy land. It is also the Christian holy land, and the Muslim holy land. Palestine wasn't even the first choice for a Jewish homeland because it was heavily contested by Jewish rabbis at the time.

Turning Palestine (I say Palestine because the entirety of what is now Israel used to be Palestine) as an exclusively Jewish ethno-state means that people of Christian and Muslim faith all over the world are stripped of their holy land. The oldest church in the world, dating back to the times of Christ is located in Gaza, and who are the ones protecting it? Palestinians.

And you know who bombed it? Even though it had 500 refugees of both Muslim and Christian faith inside? Israel.

Even the slogan used for the founding of Israel itself, "A land without people for a people without a land." Is blatantly revisionist and erases the existence of Palestinians already living there. It erases all the historic religious sites that stand there and are frequented regularly by their respective devotees. Or worse, does not consider the Palestinians as 'people.'

Some people tend to forget that religious belief is NOT the same as race, and so you CANNOT claim indigeneity just because you are a certain religion. I am an Indonesian Muslim. Born Muslim, raised Muslim, and every generation of my family have been Muslim. That doesn't mean I can say I'm indigenous to Saudi Arabia. Let alone that Saudi Arabian land is my birthright.

If a white American woman born and raised in Seattle decides to convert to Hinduism, can she then say she is now indigenous to India? Or if she has a child, and that child had a child, and they were all raised as a Hindu, but have always lived in the US all their lives, can they claim that they are indigenous to India?

No.

And the fact is, the first Jewish settlers during The First Aliyah (great Jewish migration to Palestine) came from Eastern Europe and are genetically closer to Russians and other Slavs than they are to the Jews who remained in the Middle Eastern region after their exile (and I guess some people forget that you can convert into Judaism even if you didn't come from "The Promised Land." Like for marriages and stuff.) That's why they feel the need to distinguish themselves from the word "Arab."

Granted, there were also Yemeni Jews that migrated with them (whom I would say have stronger claims to indigeneity), but even in the transition camps, there was a clear divide between the European Ashkenazi Jews and the Yemeni Jews, who literally had their kids taken from them to give to the Ashkenazi Jews.

And let's not forget that when Jewish migrants from Ethiopia came, they were given contraceptives without consent to make sure they didn't impact the "desired" population.

Wake up. This isn't a religious war. This is European colonization.

#free palestine #gaza genocide #history of israel #debunking propaganda #psa

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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"A new community housing development in the Bronx will feature a cool piece of kit: an on-site aerobic digester that can turn 1,100 pounds of food scraps into 220 pounds of high-quality fertilizer every single day.

Built by Harp Renewables, it’s basically a big stomach filled with bacteria that breaks down food scraps and wasted food into their component parts, and in the future could be a standard part of all apartment units as the amount of food waste in American reaches 30% of the total mass of all trash collection.

The Peninsula, organized by Gilbane Development Company, will feature 740 units of affordable housing, 50,000 square-foot light industrial space and equal sized green space, and 15,000 feet of commercial space, all of which will send their castaway comestibles right into the digester...

Fast Company reports that Christina Grace, founder of a zero-waste food management company, helped plan the design and implementation of the digester into The Peninsula, and helped organize a 40% grant from the city to pay the $50,000 upfront cost.

“The goal is for this material to work its way into the community garden network in the Bronx,” [Christina Grace, who helped plan the design] told the magazine, adding that she expects it to pay for itself over just a few years. “We see this as highly replicable in both commercial and residential venues. We know there’s a need for fertilizer.”

Producing fertilizer right there in the city reduces the need for it to be trucked in from afar, chipping away, even if just a bit, at NYC traffic.

Big problem solver

Perhaps uniquely beneficial to New York City compared to other spots in the U.S. is that the digester will have a significant impact on the Bronx’s share of the city’s rodent problem.

Those who’ve watched the Morgan Spurlock documentary Rats will understand why that’s significant—while those that haven’t will have to imagine what living in a megacity where rats outnumber people by around 8 or 10 to 1 looks like.

Another big problem the bio-digesters could potentially help is pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Fertilizer is a big emitter of all three of the most-targeted GHGs. Fertilizer, like quarry dust and ammonia is, like so many commodities, often imported from countries who specialize in its production, such as Norway, but also Russia and Ukraine, whose conflict has recently highlighted the fragility of the supply chain with sharp increases in prices...

Bio-digesters by design keep the CO2 and methane in the fertilizer produced, rather than it entering the atmosphere.

For these reasons and more, the aerobic bio-digester is slowly making its way into residential and industrial spaces around the country.

GNN reported on an enormous bio-digester at the heart of the D.C. advanced resource (sewage) recovery center outside the capital, and on the use of bio-digesters on Australian pig farms which are helping reduce the environmental and psychological impact of the effluent produced from such operations.

Harp Renewables tweeted how happy they were to have installed their bio-digester in the town of Cashel, Ireland.

Expect to see more stories like this pop up around the globe."

-via Good News Network, March 17, 2022

Note: Obviously gentrification bad and "affordable housing" is sometimes nowhere near as affordable as it should be, etc. etc. That said, this is such a fantastic use case that I felt I had to post it anyway.

#new york #new york city #bronx #bronx new york #supply chain #fertilizer #circular economy #sustainability #sustainable architecture #sustainable agriculture #united states #apartment buildings #bio-digester #good news #food waste #organic waste #hope #hope posting

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phantom-of-the-memes · 1 year

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is it okay to learn gaeilge if you aren’t irish but most of your heritage actually is from ireland? i totally get what you were saying with your other post about barely having irish heritage and making it an aesthetic but if that’s not the case it’s not like a closed language right?

Ok so I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here and explain my post and my feelings about this.

First and foremost, it’s not a closed language.

More people learning Irish is always a good thing. However, I think you should ask yourself your intentions for learning Irish. This is where Irish people’s annoyance at US Americans can come in.

Firstly is regards to my posts about my frustrations at Americans making my post about Ireland and our relationship with Irish and efforts to preserve it, about themselves. Sometimes the best way to be and ally to a cultural group that you are not in, is to say nothing and to simply listen. This is something we deal with on the daily, and have dealt with for centuries. Having lived in the USA for centuries and now culturally being an American, you do not feel this.

I think because America is such a mish mash of DNA, you guys have a different idea of race than we do. We identify as nationalities rather than race. Yes we are black or white, but first and foremost we are Irish or Nigerian or Korean or whatever!

An Irish person is someone who lives in Ireland, who is immersed in our culture, who is affected by our laws and politics. Not someone who had a relative centuries ago that was Irish, but is now part of a different culture. You can have zero Irish ancestry and be Irish because you live on the island! Minimising a whole culture down to blood percentages is weird and not at all how it works.

Here is when the “celtiboo” (Celtic weaboo, ie, someone who is obsessed with and fetishises the Celtic nations such as Ireland) issue comes in. Someone could have ten different DNA percentages of different European countries, yet they focus in on Ireland. This is because of the fetishised idea that people have of us and our culture. People refuse to listen to Irish people, and will only believe their idea of what our culture and history is. I know this first hand living in a city that is inundated with tourists on the daily. My sister is a tour guide at a massive historical site here. US Americans won’t listen to us.

You don’t really see this with these same people who might have French DNA for example. And there is a massive difference between our Languages. French is a language that is far from endangered. It is itself a colonisers language. You learn French so you can go to French speaking countries and use your skills. With Irish, realistically you won’t get to use it. We only get to use it when studying in school or in Gaeltachts (Irish speaking areas), and they aren’t that common.

So you have to ask yourself why you do you want to learn it? Is it for a gimmick or party trick? Something you can pull out that other people in your country won’t have heard of?

When we say we want to preserve Irish, we mean that we want our people in Ireland to be able to speak it. We aren’t trying to spread that language around the world. We just want to restore things to the way they were before England colonised us.

Anyways, in conclusion, just please don’t claim to be a nationality that your aren’t and try to speak on our issues. Please be respectful of native languages and when people from the affected group speak on our troubles, just listen! Please don’t reply making it about yourself and your whatever percentage DNA that put you in “exactly the same position” as us, because it doesn’t.

#ireland #irish #hozier #unreal unearth #hozier unreal unearth #Gaeilge #celtiboo #usa #us american #America #American

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scientia-rex · 4 months

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Good morning! I have a question. When I look up info about vitamin D, I come across many claims that people generally don't get enough of it. In a recent episode of Maintenance Phase, however, the hosts called it a "scam" or overblown, at least (I don't remember the exact wording). So, like, what's the deal with vitamin D? Do Americans get enough of it?

Probably, mostly. At the very least, people should be tested before starting repletion. It probably has a role in osteoporosis treatment and prevention, BUT how much to take and what form and when is HOTLY debated and frequently conclusions are changing.

Just to take you on a spin through the most recent Cochrane reviews (THESE ARE NOT SINGLE STUDIES, in case any of the research-naive out there want to get pissy about them; look up what a Cochrane review actually is before trying to shit on it; also note that I did NOT say this will cover every fucking person and every hypothetical they can come up with, jesus CHRIST):

No role for vitamin D in asthma

Insufficient evidence to recommend it in sickle cell

Raising vitamin D levels in cystic fibrosis patients is not beneficial

No evidence of benefit of vitamin D in MS

Supplementing vitamin D in pregnancy may have small benefits but also risk of harms

No clinically significant benefit from vitamin D supplementation in chronic pain

Insufficient data on vitamin D in inflammatory bowel disease, but no evidence of benefit

No evidence of benefit of vitamin D supplementation in liver disease

Vitamin D does not appear to prevent cancer in general population

No evidence for benefit in supplementation of vitamin D in premenopausal women to prevent bone density loss

Possible small mortality benefit of D3, but not D2, in elderly patients, but also increased risk of kidney stones and hypercalcemia

Vitamin D alone ineffective, but combined with calcium may be effective, in preventing bone fractures in older adults

Insufficient evidence for vitamin D improving COVID-19 outcomes

Now, vitamin D plus calcium in people who have post-menopausal bone density loss does seem to prevent fractures. This is why doctors routinely recommend it. However, dosage and formulation are still debated as data are insufficient, and uncertainty still large.

So, do you need to supplement? Probably not. There is some fairly weak evidence that vitamin D supplementation may help with depression, but I would argue that it's going to be most relevant in people with pre-existing deficiencies, which Medicare is just hellbent on not letting me test for anymore. They've narrowed the coverage codes for testing so now even know vitamin D deficiency isn't considered a good enough reason to test. So Medicare has very clearly decided it's not relevant, for whatever that's worth, I spit on their graves, etc. Of course, then you get into the question of what counts as a deficiency, which we also really don't know.

And to be clear, I wasn't looking through the Cochrane review results with an angle--those are most of the first page of search results on their site, with the only one skipped being similar to another one I mentioned, and I stopped when I got bored. These should not be paywalled, as I am not logged into anything and I can read it all, so try clicking the side menu on the right if you have trouble getting into the weeds.

If anything, running through this little exercise has made me less likely to recommend vitamin D supplementation, so do with that what you will.

#the attending dr. kristophine

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etaleah · 1 year

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Absolutely sucks that your blog is ravaged with proshipping apologia. Like yeah enjoying dark subject matter in fiction doesn't mean you condone it IRL (I myself am an avid gore and kink fan and use that to express my feelings in art) but uhhh there's a difference between depicting pedophilia in a story and actively jacking it to child porn which is what most if not all proshippers are trying to justify.

The Venn diagram between proshippers and anime lolicons is a circle. "Ohhh it's not real" yeah sure technically but that's still very much a child being raped on screen you're getting your rocks off to. Being in the second dimension doesn't negate that.

Most proshippers don't actually care about properly depicting complex subject matter in art. They just wanna write their incest rape South Park fics and call anyone who calls them out on it "puritans." (I doubt any of you really understand what that word means. If not liking child porn makes me a puritan then call me the Virgin fucking Mary.) It's all excuses, excuses.

Fiction affects reality more than you think. It's why propaganda is so effective. It's why Jim Crow and minstrelsy was (and still is tbh) so harmful to African Americans. Why do you think POC care about how they're depicted in media so much? It very much influences thinking, how people see the world.

(There is an argument to be made about the rampant racism in fandom, but that's a whole other conversation.)

Don't dismiss this ask. I want you to read it very carefully and get yourself out of the echo chamber you've put yourself in. Consider the points made at the very least. Use the "critical thinking" you claim to love so much.

I have considered the points you made and read them very carefully, and I have found them incorrect, relying on faulty logic, and full of unverified assumptions and false equivalences. I now bring you a full breakdown of exactly why, though I’m putting it under a cut in case anyone wants to avoid the Discourse™ because this breakdown is a long one.

*cracks knuckles* Here we go!

You clearly have a different definition of “proship” than I do. I and those that I have reblogged or liked (as far as I can tell) are “proship” in the sense that we’re arguing for the freedom to read what you want and write what you want because thoughtcrime isn’t real, no one gets hurt inside your head, and the ability to read and write what we wish is vital to a free society. That’s my definition of “proship,” and if you have a different definition and are determined to stick to it, there’s not much I can do about that. I can only tell you what my definition is so that you know what I’m referring to when I talk about it in this post or reblog posts mentioning it.

If you’re referring to what’s on AO3 (which is what I am mainly concerned with, as I don’t talk about other fanfic sites on my blog), that is not child porn. It’s not. The term child porn refers to sexual photos and videos of real children, not text-only stories about fictional ones. AO3 does not allow users to upload videos nor does it allow users to upload photos except for their profile pictures, and it is literally written into their Terms of Service that they do not allow child pornography on their site. You couldn’t put child porn on AO3 if you tried. Text by itself with no photos or videos accompanying it is not child porn, and that’s true no matter how disgusting and immoral you find it. I don’t support or justify child porn because I don’t support or justify real children being hurt, which is what actual child porn involves and requires.

What I do support is the freedom for everyone to read and write what they want, and I am not going to stop supporting that.

How do you know that the people reading or writing a fic are “getting their rocks off to” or “actively jacking it” to what's in it? Did they tell you? Have you developed telepathic powers and read their minds? How do you know that people “don’t actually care about properly depicting complex subject matter in art?” Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. You don’t know why someone is reading something and you don’t know why someone is writing something. I have no idea whether the person checking Mein Kampf or Birth of a Nation out of a library is a racist who agrees with everything in both works or a scholar doing research for a paper on racism or just an average joe who wants to see what’s in there for themselves and form their own conclusions, which is a perfectly fine and intellectually healthy thing to want. I don’t know which of these is the case and I’m not going to automatically assume the worst-case scenario, nor am I going to demand that the person checking out those works provide me with an explanation because they don’t owe me one. You don’t know why someone is reading or writing a rape or incest story. Maybe they find it sexy or maybe they’re a victim themselves, working through their trauma by expressing it via the written word. You don’t know which one it is, and they don’t owe you an explanation. I’d advise you not to automatically assume the worst-case scenario either.

Because you know what happens when people assume the worst of an author’s intentions and assume they know what a work is doing? You get situations like Isabel Fall’s and Lindsay Ellis’ where people were sure they knew that the former was being transphobic with her short story and that the latter was trivializing rape with her “rape rap.” They were so sure, as sure as you are in your ask, not a doubt in their minds, didn’t think it was possible for there to be any other reason or interpretation, and so they felt totally justified in harassing those women. I’m sure each of them convinced themselves they were doing this because they were an ally who just cared so much and that those authors deserved the hate they were getting because (gasp!) they wrote something bad and if you write something bad, you should expect to be called out. And then they found out—oops! Turns out Isabel Fall was a trans person and not a cis person being transphobic after all, and was actually writing a story about a subject she had plenty of experience with, and—oops! Turns out Lindsay Ellis was an assault victim herself and she was coping with her trauma in the best way she could because making a lighthearted rap about the subject made it more accessible, easier to deal with, and not as scary and she wasn’t making fun of victims after all. Whoops!

How do you know the people writing these fics you find so horrible aren’t doing something similar to Ellis and Fall? How do you know they aren’t victims working through their grief and trauma in a way that helps them? How do you know you’re not misjudging and assuming the worst of them just like Fall’s and Ellis’ haters misjudged and assumed the worst of them? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. How do you know?

Why do you get to be the authority who decides what “properly depicting complex subject matter in art” even looks like? Maybe someone else read it and decided it was properly depicted; why does your opinion and interpretation matter more than theirs? Why is yours the correct one? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them.

I don’t know what anime lolicon is, so I’m not gonna comment on that, though I will say it disproves your point about the Venn diagram being a circle since I am technically a proshipper and yet I don’t even know what that is. I’m sure if you look hard enough, you can probably find someone using the proship label who has done something bad or supports something bad, but the same can be said about antis. You get assholes in every group. Doesn’t mean everyone in the group is a bad person.

(Also I know this isn’t the most important point here but the fact that you’re more worried about the content of South Park fanfics rather than the South Park show itself says to me that you care more about finding an easy target than about minimizing harm because that show has plenty of racist and anti-Semitic “jokes” in it that are being fed to a much larger audience than any fanfic of it could ever have, yet I don’t see you being worried at all about that. Wonder why.)

(Another less important point but one I’m still going to indulge in: I find your line about “if that makes me a puritan then call me the Virgin Mary” funny in an ironic way because in trying to claim that people don’t know what the word puritan means, you proved that you yourself don’t know what it means by implying that puritan = virgin. Puritan and virgin are not the same thing. Virgin is a state of being that could be voluntary or, if you want sex but can’t find anyone to give it to you, it could be involuntary. One could be a virgin and still be sex-positive just like one could be a religious fundamentalist with ten kids who’s had all the sex required to make those ten kids but still be sex-negative and think that only the straight married baby-making kind is okay and all other kinds are impure and gross. Unlike virginity, puritanism is a mindset, not a state of being, and therefore it is always voluntary. You can be one without being the other. Again, not a super important point, but I thought the irony of that line was funny.)

You do know that Jim Crow was a set of laws and policies set down by the government and enforced by police and courts and not, like…a dirty fanfic or book, right? You do know that? It was and still is a legal framework that’s baked into the justice system and has been the driving force behind everything from mass incarceration to drug policy to redlining and housing to voter disenfranchisement. Bitch, I fucking wish that Jim Crow was nothing more than a bad fanfic or a bad story; that would make it a hell of a lot easier to fight! Acting like any one (fan)fiction writer or any one piece of (fan)fiction has the same amount of power as the fucking US government is some insane false equivalence.

As for the representation argument, you’re misunderstanding what that movement is about and why the founders of it cared about the state of media. We Need Diverse Books and organizations like it did not start their campaigns because they were disgusted by what White writers were doing and wanted to stop them and make sure they could never do it again. They started their campaigns to empower and encourage authors of color. It began when a few Black mothers were looking for books for their kids and realized they couldn’t find any with a Black child on the cover, not because they read something a White person wrote and were so horrified by it that they had to put a stop to it. Being so horrified by something in a story that you have to put a stop to it is what Moms for Liberty does. The goal of the representation matters movement is to diversify the publishing industry since it’s still majority White, to publish more authors of color because most of the authors being published are still White, and to update school curriculums so that students of color can read about and study characters like themselves. All of which are good and reasonable goals. It is not and never was about telling people what they were and were not allowed to write or read, or saying that they’re bad people because of what they write or read.

“Influences thinking” and “affecting reality” are not the same as controlling or determining thinking and reality. If fiction really does affect how people see the real world, then why, in a time when we have more positive books/movies/TV shows/plays of and by POC and positive queer books/movies/TV shows/plays than ever before, are we still dealing with vicious racism and homophobia? If fiction influences thinking and affects reality and how people see the world so much, then why, in a time when we have Drag Queen Story Hour and trans characters are being featured positively in popular TV shows and trans actors are winning awards, are we still dealing with some of the worst transphobia we’ve ever seen? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them.

Fiction doesn’t make things happen. Playing violent video games doesn’t make a person violent. Reading or writing about an immoral act does not mean you agree with, get off to, or are going to do the immoral act. And that’s true regardless of what the immoral act in question is, whether it's gore or kink or rape or incest.

The problem with “you can read/write what you want except for X because X is gross/morally wrong” is that the bigots and mean-spirited folks of the world will find a way to make anything they don’t like into X. That’s the part antis don’t think about. But we’re already seeing it play out in school board meetings.

“We don’t want to ban Maus because it talks about the Holocaust, we want to ban it because uhhh it has pictures of naked prisoners in the camps and therefore it’s pornography.”

“We don’t want to ban Beloved because it talks about slavery, we want to ban it because uhhh it has a slave getting raped in it and therefore it’s pornography and sexually explicit and won’t someone think of the children!”

“We don’t want to ban all of these books because they have Black kids on the covers, we want to ban them because uhhh they’re critical race theory and indoctrination that teaches White kids to hate themselves!”

“We don’t want to keep drag queens out of libraries because we hate them and are transphobic, we want to keep them out of libraries because uhhh they’re sexualizing minors and teaching them to mutilate their genitals!”

Those are real examples. And they will happen to fanfiction too if we’re not careful. Someone doesn’t like Sonadow? Well they’re not against it because they’re homophobic or just don’t like the ship, they’re against it because uhhh it’s pedophilia since Shadow is 50-65 depending on how you count it and Sonic is 15. If it can happen with books, it can happen with fanfiction.

We’ve already seen cases of people running for board positions on AO3 who talked about “cleaning up the site,” and each time it turned out they were homophobic and were very much including queerness in what they considered “dirty.” That’s going to keep happening because antis keep falling for it and getting swept up in a manufactured moral panic without thinking through what the enforcement would be like. The whole reason AO3 has the policies that it does is because these kinds of purges happened regularly on other sites. Every time, people insisted it was “just the bad ones,” “just the immoral ones,” “just the underage ones,” etc. And it never was. And after every purge, there’d be a lot fewer queer love stories in the world.

How are you going to make sure that doesn’t happen again? How will you decide whose definitions of terms like “pedophilia,” “grooming,” “underage,” “sexualizing,” “fetishizing” get used? That’s the part antis never think about, is what enforcement of what they want would actually involve. Some people think “underage” is anyone under 25 or under 20 and some think it’s anyone under 18. Which one is right? Who gets to decide? Which country’s age of consent is the correct one that fanfic writers around the world all have to abide by regardless of where they’re from, and why is that country’s age of consent the correct one? Whose interpretation of a work is the correct one? And whoever ends up making these decisions, how will you stop this decision maker who gets to say what counts as “properly and improperly depicting complex subject matter” and what doesn’t from shifting the goalposts and abusing their power? How will you stop them from applying those negative labels to just any work they don’t like? What checks and balances will be put in place to keep whoever does the fanfiction gatekeeping from abusing that position? Don’t dismiss those questions, answer them. I’ve yet to see an anti have an answer to these questions.

I know propaganda is effective because you’ve fallen for it. The idea that peoples’ ability to read and write what they want must be restricted because Think of the Children™ and because “only bad people would ever want to read/write something bad” is the same talking points used by Moms for Liberty, Ron DeSantis, the people protesting Drag Queen Story Hour, and so many others. Every single time an attempt is made to restrict the freedom to read and write, it is always couched in the paternalistic language of protection, safety, just looking out for kids, and the fearmongering language of “that stuff is freaky, dirty, and gross and only a pervert would ever have a problem with it being banned.” Every time, it is discussed with the language of protection and safety, and every time, it is a lie.

I support the right of everyone to read and write what they want because I don’t know their situation, don’t have the right to demand an explanation of their situation or a detailed account of their very private and personal traumas, and have seen what happens when people try to excuse banning and censorship of written text or harassing authors with the excuses of “it’s just the bad ones,” “we’re just protecting kids,” “we just have a few concerns,” “we’re just being good allies,” and “if I wrote something gross I’d expect to get called out!”

So. Now that I have responded to your points, I hope that you will very carefully read and consider my points at the very least and get out of your echo chamber and use some critical thinking too. The fact that you put the phrase critical thinking in quotes like it’s a fake thing that doesn’t exist instead of a real and very important skill reveals a lot more than I think you meant it to, but still I hope you try.

I’ve disabled anonymous asks because I want to see if you’re brave enough to respond without hiding behind anonymity. I’ll be interested to see if you or anyone who agrees with you actually provides thoughtful, well-reasoned, and well-articulated answers to the questions I’ve asked instead of replying with a thought-terminating ad hominem like “That was a lot of words to say that you’re a [insert bad thing here]!” or “Just say you [insert bad thing here] and go!” And if you can actually provide evidence for your claims, if you can provide non-anecdotal, verifiable studies and data that are not from a religious or rightwing think tank that prove your points about proshipping and proshippers, then I’ll really be impressed.

I’m not holding my breath though.

#anti nonsense #anti censorship #my thoughts #book banning #fandom #ao3

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preservationofnormalcy · 11 months

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(Happy Halloween! I'm doing a rare OOC note at the beginning that this one is darker than other interviews, so a content warning for descriptions of gore, body horror, and alcohol/alcoholism.) [I am in the darkly lit reception area of Office Security, known by the rest of the Office as O-Sec. It’s late, and most employees have gone home for the night. Most of the lights are off, but along one wall there is a spot of quiet activity. This wall is covered in neatly ordered brass plates, bearing names and dates. This is a memorial. Plates above some columns list broad date ranges, and others list specific dates or events. One larger section that stands out is labeled “Operation Deep Whisper”, which seems to have taken place in the 1970s.

Several people in work clothes are working along one section of the wall, furthest to the right - the most recent. A series of plates, larger and more ornate than the others with a photo attached, are being taken off the wall. One worker takes down the last plate - an african-american woman smiles at me over his shoulder as he does, and I see the name Agent Pearlgate before the plate is slid with the others into a wooden crate.]

K] Damn shame.

M] Security Director Knight?

K] Affirmative.

[I’m not startled by his presence, despite his sudden appearance. A middle aged, tall caucasian man, salt and pepper hair over a simple dress uniform. I know this man has more clearance than most people in the Office, but his clothes are unassuming. An undershirt and tie, a name tag and badge the only things betraying his rank. His stature is tall and proud, confident, but the only thing that would truly stand out in a crowd of military men would be his mask. A strange mask, black and sleek with vents on either side. His voice is not affected by it, a low, gravely, world-weary tone that sounds like it should be coming from the mouth of an action movie star. It’s almost too perfect. Knight nods, then pauses and jerks his head down a dark hallway.

Motion activated lights precede us as we walk down the hallway, Knight’s hands grasped together behind his back. They shut back off as we pass, giving the sense of a spot of light moving through the darkness.]

K] Heard I was being interrogated.

[The half-joke is obvious despite his tone, giving me a wry look back over his shoulder.]

M] A couple simple questions, Director.

K] That’s what they all say.

M] Including what the “damn shame” was about. Why take down a memorial?

K] I can’t answer that. Directive 61722.

[His tone was serious, and I know better than to pry. We enter his office, and it’s about what I expected - sparsely furnished with serious-minded furniture, plaques and medals adorning the walls, models and weapons mounted on stands sitting on bookshelves. The part of his office that stood out was the lighting. The office was very dark, with only one light on directly above his desk. It’s by that light I was able to make out shapes on the walls. When he sits at the desk, the light reminds me of an interrogation room light, a solid conical beam from the lamp above him, illuminating his arms but leaving his face in shadow. Silently, he pulls a bottle from the bottom drawer of his desk, filling one shot glass and hovering the bottle meaningfully over the second one, looking to me.]

M] Just a sip.

K] You driving?

M] I’m a lightweight, Director.

[He relented, pouring a tiny amount into the bottom of the second glass and corking the bottle.]

K] So…what’re your questions?

M] I’m conducting my observations based on posters I see in my site tours, and I saw yours. The…ontophage one.

K] Nasty little assholes.

M] What?

[He leans back, and in the shadows I can see him pull his mask away from his face, drink, and replace it.]

K] The ‘phages. Nasty little assholes. Feral, mindless as far as we can tell. One of the most annoying things we deal with, and that’s saying something. We lost whole sites to them, before we started scrutinizing a lot of our “lost item” cases. Now it’s just a matter of recon and elimination. Ever seen a shotgun shell loaded with ‘phagebuck? Hell of a thing.

M] Usually I’d ask what your department does, but I think in this case it’s pretty obvious.

K] There’s things that go bump in the night, ma’am. And O-Sec bumps back.

M] I wouldn’t think that many supernatural things could be dealt with like that.

K] Comes with the territory. One of the professors could explain it better, but if you exist in realspace, you take up some of the traits of realspace. Like a vulnerability to bullets.

M] It’s that simple?

K] Not really ever that simple. Sometimes you have to dress it up a little. Silver bullets, cross-tipped hollow points, phagebuck, tindalosian powder, magebore, chronojacketed rounds. Hell, I’ve done fieldwork in flintlocks. But for the most part… It’s like getting invited to your friend’s house as a kid. Some families take their shoes off at the door, and you have to play along. They come here, something about our reality makes them play along, at least partially.

[Knight pauses.]

K] We face a lot of different shit, ma’am. Shit I don’t even want to think about. The guys in the button up shirts do a damn fine job with Plan A. Diplomacy, problem solving, the whole deal. Compassion, that’s what the Office is about. But sometimes they need us. We’re here to be Plan B, Plan C if need be.

[I take a small sip of the drink.]

M] I guess that answers a lot of my questions. Every org needs security. I guess it’s just a question of how efficient, and that may be beyond me. My superiors will want to see your records from Los Angeles.

K] That may pose a problem.

M] The Directive.

K] Mm-hmm.

[There’s a moment of heavy silence, and Knight breaks it by leaning on the table.]

K] You wanna know what I think happened?

M] Seems like it might be above my clearance. Not above yours, though. So why is it what you think happened, and not what you know?

[Another pause. I can sense Knight narrowing his eyes.]

K] The names out there. That’s what happened. Omega Hand. Agent Fairweather, Agent Scratch, Agent Pea—th’rest…

[He sighed, putting his glass on the desk. It only now occurred to me that he might have been drinking before. Why else was he here so late? This last glass was only the icing on the cake.]

K] I was supposed to be there, you know. In LA. But I got…I was scared.

M] Of…of what?

K] …1991. On assignment in Alaska. There was this…cult. Necromancy, but they were…organized. We don’t get that a lot. Usually just whackos trying shit in their basement, too suspicious to be organized, but there they were. Threatening a ZU-class normality collapse. Managed a guerilla army one hundred strong, living and arming up in the cold up there. We weren’t…prepared for it. We even had backup from the RCOE guys, but it wasn’t enough. Picked us off one by one, sewed us back together again. My buddy Akers, he…he came back and he had these...knives on his hands…walking on shredded femurs bolted to stilts. I was the only survivor. Almost wasn’t. They brought me to their leader, this…this corpse. Wasn’t even animated. Just a corpse, rotting and bloated and…one of ‘em touched me. My face.

[He reached up to his mask, pulling it free. In the cone of light, I can see his lower face - everything from his nose down is desiccated, rotting. Sewn up skin but bone white teeth, a smell like rot and formaldehyde roiling across the table. I choke on my vomit, and as he speaks again, he slurs from the holes in his cheeks.]

K] Every time I die, I come back. And every time I come back, I leave a little more on the other side. Every damn time there’s less of me. And I got scared.

[He places the mask back on. I am forcing myself not to vomit, unable to look at him. He seems nonchalant, looking at the bottle of alcohol again.]

K] Damndest thing….I can still taste the booze just fine.

#office for the preservation of normalcy #interview #ontophages #body horror tw #gore tw #alcoholism tw #microfiction #sci fi #horror #writers on tumblr

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stardustizuku · 2 months

Text

So, I’m not gonna tag this. Mostly because I don’t want to blow this more out of proportion than it was.

For starters and some context, I am Latina. I am not considered white by the standards of the country I’m living in. But I am considered white in the country I’m from. So I am acutely aware of how racism diverts itself from culture to culture. What you consider the “other” varies from the culture you are speaking from.

I have stated, I am not Asian. The context of what I know, entails as racism in Japan and how it presents its extremely limited. I have read books, watched documentaries, done research but it’s not empirical and that’s something that drastically changes the quality of information I could give.

We have three ways of framing any given analysis of racism - one, using my cultural context of dissecting the “other” (which would consider religious background, skin color and class). Two, the cultural context of the author’s background, in this case Japan’s (which would consider skin color and nationality). And three and my least favorite, American cultural context, which places an uncomfortable amount of emphasis on skin color.

The reason I don’t like talking about a piece of media through the lenses of American Cultural Context is because that on itself is a form of American Imperialism (from my humble point of view as a Latina who suffered from American Imperialism).

It’s a way for Americans to position their own racism problems in the center of the conversation. Forcing everyone to comply to what their idea of “white” and “black” means.

And unfortunately, for everyone here involved, that’s the lense through which half this site uses as a default.

So you would understand my exasperation, when I see someone: not explain the cultural context through which they’re analyzing racism, explain little to nothing abt said cultural context, and ranting off more about the morality of the text than actually discuss any of these points with any nuance.

In my mind, I have my own cultural background at the forefront. Unfortunately, I have the American cultural background jammed in the back of my mind too. And suddenly you insert the Japanese cultural background handfisted in with the grace of a red eyed bull in a glass shop.

I get fed up, I don’t understand what’s going on, I make an untagged post criticizing the PERSON’s analysis skills (which I’m sorry if I’m mean, but it sorta is bad).

I never said or implied “this work of fiction doesn’t contain problems”, I just said I wished the people who criticized it had the skills to properly explain their point.

Which, by the way, part of that writing skills needed is understanding that your interpretation is not gospel.

Cause like, I had a COMPLETELY different interpretation on Lanzenave. And the country to me, has never come across as a villain.

Like, let’s look for a second MY cultural context, and you’ll understand why I was very confused by the original post.

I genuinely 100% thought Lanzanavians were being portrayed as the GOOD guys.

For starters, the “dark-skinned” comment comes in Part 5 Volume 5 where it comes from being compared to royalty - which may I remind you WE HATE. Like at this point the Royals have been portrayed as incompetent buffoons who have done nothing more than fuck up their country.

To me, this was less of an indicator of racial profiling, and more of “they are different from the awful royals”.

Which, in my mind, made them better.

A way to say, whatever crimes the royal family has committed, it bears nothing of the actual intentions and wants of Lanzenavians.

Thing that is sorta supported by the rest of the narrative.

Lanzenave was once a country with no King. Then a King came from a magical place across the sea. But as he became more and more useless, they decided to send him back.

It looked, to me, like Lanzenave was a colonized country, that used their King’s greed to get rid of him. It’s stated that many people who came from Lanzenave weren’t just ‘natives’, but nobles.

In my country we have a term “malinche” which refers to anyone who thinks “first world countries” are better than your homeland. A cheap attempt to replicate it and discard your country for the sake of false status - is considered a laughing stock.

Which makes obvious why, the way I interpret it, people who wanted to leave Lanzenave for Yurgenschmidt never registered as actual Lanzenavians. To me they were malinches. Actual Lanzenavians were those who stayed in their country, those who embraced technology and rejected mana and feystones.

In my eyes, Lanzenavians were always smart, hardworking people being exploited and colonized. Who managed to expel the poison. The closing of the gate to Yurgenschmidt wasn’t a punishment. It was freedom. A guarantee that their colonizers wouldn’t return.

The people who invaded, were always that. Colonizers. Nobles. Rich people who think they’re better than poor people.

To me this was Latinoamerican culture in a nutshell. A place where, where you consider yourself to be from, carries way more meaning than skin color or appearance. If you say you’re Mexican, you are Mexican. It doesn’t matter what you look like. But if you renounce your heritage and call yourself “American”, you get mockery and contempt. Cause Americans won’t take you in, they don’t think you are part of them. But you’d rather not be a part of them, than be a part of us? Then follow their rules, and whatever punishment follows - it’s rightfully deserved.

So you would imagine my surprise, when I see someone with a different perspective. Noting something true that I hadn’t realized - this is a Japanese story. Applying the lenses of your own cultural context isn’t how the story is meant to be interpreted.

But instead of anything productive to be had in a conversation, I’m met with…well. People picking a fight.

They genuinely don’t consider or want, to be honest, any sort of different perspective. What they want is to complaint.

They’re Angry that some of us enjoy the story. That we have different things to enjoy out of a story. That we aren’t focusing enough on the problematic aspects of the text. Reading untagged posts and forming a convoluted opinion off two or three sentences I make. Going into huge tangents that completely miss the point.

I think it’s important, if you wanna actually talk instead of throwing buzzwords around, to lay groundwork of what want.

Again, I’m not criticizing wanting to discuss the issues of racism and xenophobia that exist - but I am sorta criticizing your ability to convey a message.

I’m not saying AoB is particularly progressive. But the books do criticize royalty, generational power, the patriarchy and systems that oppress women, the Sakoku Period, inequality in education, restriction of information and censorship…which are issues that I very rarely see tackled in this G E N R E (bcs obv if you switch to other genres and books you will find it. But shoujo isekais that talk abt royalty are rarely ballsy enough to directly criticize the power fantasy they’re writing for young women).

This is honestly a very toxic mentality. I made this for the few ppl who might be following this thing - to me Lanzenavians were always very cool.

#blah blah blah #sáquenme de aquí alv los gringos me tienen hartaaaa

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trickstarbrave · 2 months

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a big problem i do have with TES is while there is while the gods are real and everyone basically has a religion (minus the dwemer) most of the religions are not given any depth. the only times they are is if kirkbride worked on it and bethesda actually uses it (like in morrowind and to a degree earlier games). after morrowind the religions are kind of afterthoughts. religious holidays are briefly mentioned but not actually used, daedric summoning days are ignored, and we dont really see regional variations in worship anymore by the time of skyrim when a lead director decided "actually the Objectively Correct religion is the imperial religion. so there. anyone who is remotely a good guy or correct has to follow them".

no one goes to temples really, no one makes sacrifices on altars, i see places named after gods or saints but no people really. weddings are religious affairs with no explanation as to why really except in the case of mara being a god of marriage (well why do you need to go to the temple of that? and if there is a dedicated temple in riften, why is there a royal wedding in solitude?)

in morrowind people have saints and shrines and pilgrimages to these shrines and holy sites. in oblivion and skyrim there are chapels and temples and shrines but i never really SEE anyone going to them much. a couple of quests have you go there but its not really a thing you get the idea happens in the background without you. some nords meditate on the way up high hrothgar at least? but why dont i hear about them going to temples and shrines more outside of disjointed quests that don't really give me a picture of how the religion WORKS?

its just kinda handwaved as "you are a white christian american, you know how church works" when uhhhhh christianity isnt polytheistic. and many of these gods dont make sense to have a christian religious structure. they fill in "praying" with "meditating" but it doesn't do much to differentiate what the fuck they are meditating on. the tribunal temple is evil dark elf catholicism mixed with some evil buddism and is given depth without being overwhelming to non-religion nerds. but i cannot really grasp what the fuck is going on with the rest of the religions in other games bc it just seems to be There to fill the medieval fantasy religion quota because religion was so central to the daily life of everyone in the middle ages it would be bizarre to not have ANY of it and they didnt want to put in the work replacing it nor did they wanna do much for it.

#when get mankar rambling in oblivion but tbh #that was lazily handled by bethesda #instead of building off of ideas they just copy and pasted an email kirkbride wrote

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wakandamama · 1 year

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I got a bit of a loaded question, sis. And if it's inappropriate you can tell me, but you said you're Black and Cherokee, so I thought you might have a good perspective.

Do you have any suggested authors, books, or articles behind what seems to be this lack of Black and Indigenous solidarity? I was scrolling this morning and I saw this post that literally was two seconds from dropping a slur (the dogwhistles were horns) and I'm like ... well damn. White Supremacy works terrible wonders, bc I would think the circumstances that brought our groups together would cause some sort of solidarity, so I'm always blown away when I see stuff like that. With other groups I'm familiar with the reasons behind it, but I don't want to assume things for this one.

Sure thing! I'm also gonna annotate this with my own story and learned knowledge of the struggles I've encountered while trying to expand the understand of my identity at the end.

This awesome article by Amber Starks

All these articles by Alaina E. Roberts she amazing at inner community discussion on this topic along with just being an amazing scholar and writer

This Guardian article by Caleb Gayle (another amazing scholar and author, just anything he's written on the topic will do but this article really helped me understand why I had issues connecting) that explores a case study of a Black family aving to fight for a claim to their indigenous identity with certain tribes that want to erase their history of participating in the chattel slavery of Black people

Also Gayle's book We Refuse to Forget

The book Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage by Darnella Davis

The Book Blood Politics by Circe Sturm

All of Zora Neal Hurston's black anthropology films they are free on YouTube or through her foundation site and the Black Film Archive

This article by Rebecca Nagle that explores the history of Cherokee confederates and the community slow acknowledgement and atonement for them

This blog post leads to many other articles and interviews with other Black Natives and their experiences in different tribes

This Kyle Mays interview about the re-establishment of Cherokee Freedmans status (hey that's me) and it impact

These npr articles 1 2 about The fight for tribal rights of Cherokee Freedmans

kararoselles, choctawchickasawfreedmen, and faithcampos on tik tok are incredible too

---

Okay so boom, me personally I am both Cherokee Freedman and by Blood quantum (ick) am Cherokee. However I claim my rights though the Dawes Rolls my great- grandfather enrolled too after emancipation because his father (and 2 aunts) were Cherokee slaves. I only really started connect with the native part of my identity recently (like 3 years)

Growing up I was told a lot of the family stories and raised to do a lot of old school practices that are crossed with being Black and being Cherokee. You drop me off in prairie land or a river side I'm surviving, (I hate it but I can process a deer) I grew up weaving baskets/wicker and doing beading, I know a lot of family recipes that now that I've expanded my knowledge are meals that are mixed between traditional Native American foods and AA cooking. My great-grandfather helped build Grand Lake in OK. My family is even prominently buried in and care takers for 2 Freedman Cemeteries.

But I was always taught that was just part of my and my family's Blackness. I have no living family that aren't Black in some way. Being Native American was an afterthought because of the generational racial trauma. Multiple of my full blood grandmas weren't allowed to have their grandchildren at their homes or on their land because they were Black. My mother often told me stories that her grandmother would sneak them to her home and land to learn how to forage, everytime they left she would cut her hair off to give to them because there was always the threat that they were going to get reported and her rights would be stripped. One of my ancestors is lost because he was a runaway slave from the Cherokee slave trade, many were denied status at some point

It's a lot and it didn't help that when I learned about this side of me and tired to reach out to the Native American club in my school. The Cherokee people there started being very racist to me and dismissed me. It jaded me, it pissed me off, I am still bitter and will probably be until I die.

Because a lot of the problems I advocated for (such as local climate change, environmental degradation, contaminated water, land stealing, food deserts, ect.) We're movements spearheaded by Native Americans in my area. I was denied say or acknowledgement because my issues were "Black issues". If someone told you "Hey this white rancher who had only been here 12 years is illegal trying to destroy a Native American cemetery so he had more graze land for his cows" the trial authority would be on that. But no, since the cemetery is Black Cherokees and Freedman they don't want to claim jurisdiction to help my family save it.

But, I do recognize that there has been a long and important history of Native and Black solidarity from social justice to environmental things. To just the clear fact that Native American people had everything stolen from them by white supremacy while Black Americans were stolen people brought here. Just as there was chattel slavery of Black people in certain major tribes, there were many that protected and supported escaping slaves. That history and cross culture is mine, I've made it one of my side missions to learn more about my Native side's culture, reconnects as some of my older family members are (mostly through folklore learning and connecting the things I was raised to do to Cherokee practices, participating in tribal news/votes ect.) But I haven't got the energy to connect with the people yet, I haven't gone to any in person Circles or powwows. I've only met other Black Cherokees with the intention to have community and friendship with.

Unfortunately but not surprising, the cause of a lack of solidarity comes down to white supremacy and global antiblackness. But I think that is the cause for a lack of ALL POC solidarity with Black people, especially in America.

------

And for the hoteps that are gonna find this post and try to be fucking weird on it.

NO! BLACK PEOPLE (THOSE DESCENDANTS OF THE SURVIVORS OF THE MIDDLE PASSAGE SLAVE TRADE, DEMOGRAPHICALLY CATEGORIZED AS AFRICAN AMERICANS TODAY, MAJORITY OF US) ARE NOT THE ORIGINAL NATIVE AMERICANS OR OTHER INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO THE AMERICAS

Do NOT be a fucking weirdo and deny the legacy of survival, tragedy, perseverance, and love that our ancestors went through in the past to lead to your lineage of today. I am a special and blessed case to have the family records, story keeping, and DNA testing available to claim my indigenous identity that is directly linked in through my Black identity.

DO NOT BE WEIRD ON THIS POST, THOSE STONE HEADS WITH THICK LIPS ARE NOT WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN MISLED TO THINK THEY ARE. CHEROKEE NATION WAS A DICK BEFORE HOPKINS WAS ELECTED. PLEASE RESEARCH YOUR LINEAGE BEFORE YOU HOP ON MY POST BECAUSE I WILL EMBARRASS YOU WITH THE RECEIPTS OF MINE

#black people #black culture #Black History #indigenous culture #indigenous people #black rights #indigenous rights #indigenous history #sources #afro indigenous #i believe im solidarity but now that 7/10 times POC Solidarity is a myth #unfortunately antiblackness makes the world go round

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a-new-vers · 8 months

Text

~H5~

Woke up today to find out Halsey has set the stage for a new hunt for fans to go on. In true Halsey fashion, it's cryptic with a distinct visual style we can probably expect from this era.

So let's explore, shall we?

A Lil' Timeline:

Halsey played the 27th at Lollapalooza India. During their set before they began to play Gasoline, a visual on screen displayed a URL: FOR MY LAST TRICK (click to go to the site).

Click HERE to see a video of when it was displayed at the concert.

The Website:

The theme behind the website seems to be opening a miscellaneous stick/patch packet.

The first thing is prompting the user to "pull to open" as in a tag to swipe off. You can see the collection of patches behind the plastic wrap. Once you finally open the package, all the patches will disperse.

This is where the Internet sleuthing begins, people. 24 unique patches (technically 25, but I'll get into that later) with different meanings. Let's get into it.

1 - SNA Flight Tag

So really obscure, but googling Air California flight tag brought me to this used bookstore site. In any case, the thing to notice is the date it is attributed with, 1968.

2 - Vintage Blotter Art

According to this blog (which is the only place I could find the image), this is a vintage blotter from 1994. Blotter art is an "...art form printed on perforated sheets of absorbent blotting paper infused with liquid LSD."

3 - Blythe Dolls

I believe this doll is a Blythe doll. Image reverse search does not come up with an exact result, but from the details you can make out, the dolls eyes are quite clear. Which looks a lot like Blythe Dolls, a doll brand that came out in 1972. Their gimmick was that the eyes could move left to right.

4 - Witch Halsey

Unsure, but it would seem it's Halsey as a witch. The aesthetics are similar to IICHLIWP (H4).

If the main theme here is the 70s, there’s the movie Season of the Witch that came out in 1973, February 14th. It’s apparently commentary on traditional American suburban lifestyle through the perspective of a housewife who does not like her place in life. She meets a witch and progressively gets into the occult.

5, 18, 19, 23 - Outside of USA

5: It's hard to tell what most of the words are, but the text "Pagado" (Spanish for "paid") is on the piece of paper. . The particular location might be Palenque, a Mexican city. Relevant date: June 25th, 1977.

18: Belleville. Based on a real winter carnival programme. Belleville is a a city in Ontario, Canada. Relevant date: 1971.

19: “We smokers all want to be non-smokers too” or something along these lines. I'm trusting online translation for this (German to English). Unable to find when this was made.

23: “For Us.” French. The image search doesn’t result anything. Unable to find when this was made.

6 - Peril is My Pay

Based off of a detective book involving traveling. The font is the exact same as one of the book covers. It was published in 1960s.

7 - I have something to tell you

A sign up. I assume it has to do with being updated on any album news.

Looking through the inspect tab you can see the information is being sent to “Sony Fan Music.” It does take note of which country you are in and your address.

8 , 9 - Round visuals

I think these are visuals to give grasp to the 70s theme. It’s reminiscent of 60’s/70’s clothing/aesthetic.

10 - Michigan license plate.

1971 comes up in the plate. Michigan has come up in HFK (H2), on Bad At Love. I doubt this has anything to do about the “boy back in Michigan” but perhaps traveling back throughout her albums.

11 - Ghost

Jan 27th 2014, interesting date to put since this is the date this is all happening, just a decade after.

I've seen some people say this is meant to be the anniversary for Ghost, the song. Although it came out in 2014, its release date was in July, and it originally came out on sound cloud on February 3rd. So unsure why Jan 27th is there. EDIT: I have been made aware that Jan 27th 2014 was its international release date! I am but a fool.

The text can be in response to the lyric “Where did you go?” and the themes on the song of someone leaving. IDK, this could also be a meta thing. If a theme here is traveling and visiting locations/people, then perhaps one thing you won't find if the ghost?

Additionally, this follows the theme of revisiting her previous albums.

12 - Cannel 17

WPHL-TV is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the local outlet for The CW Television Network. The logos here are form the 60’s/70’s.

13 - Master Mystifier

Or, alternatively, Harry Houdini. The date I do not believe has any relevance here but perhaps the idea of magic.

I came about the google search “Houdini’s Last Trick” where his last trick is widely asked about. It would seem to be an inspiration for the name of the website. So potentially Halsey will lean into magic, tricks, and deception.

14 - Calling Cards

Text on card: “Compliments - May I See (C) You (U) Home? If not, please return this card.”

“May I See You Home” seemed to be a common phrase for calling cards. They were handed out to ask people out. Again, the font and images are similar to H4 aesthetic. These were used in the 18th and 19th century.

15 - B&W Hair

Oh, I actually no idea.

16 - Candy

The closest I could get to finding what this meant is when this font was used for the book Candy by Maxwell Kenton, published in 1958.

As wiki describes the plot "Candy Christian, aged eighteen, is an extremely pretty and desirable but naïve young woman, who finds herself in a variety of farcical sexual situations as a result of her desire to help others. The men in her life, regardless of age or relationship, wish only to possess her."

17 - Southern-Belle

Clearly the saying southern belle. A girl born form the south, typically with certain attributes. The saying came from the idea that “... a girl who was expected to grow up into a lady. She was supposed to be fragile and flirtatious while also sexually innocent. She was beautiful but risky to touch, like porcelain.”

https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/2259#:~:text=Course%3A,risky to touch%2C like porcelain

20 - Rabbit

I couldn’t find anything that looks the same, but I assume it has to do with Alice and Wonderland. Concerning dates, the book was published in the 1800s, while the arguably most famous iteration (the animated movie) came out in the 50s.

However, this can relate to the potential theme of magic and deception and girl/womanhood. But I’m also inclined to think the rabbit might have nothing to do with Wonderland and might be something else all together.

21 - K-Mart

Wiki comes in handy here. As described, “Satisfaction Always icon seen on Kmart branded packaging until the mid-to-late 70s, adapted from a hanging sign displayed in every early Kmart store.” So 70’s themed.

https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Kmart_(United_States)/Other?file=Kmart_-_1960s_(Satisfaction).svg.

22 - Eye, Eye, Eye, and Eye

The eyes. Girl IDK, they’re eyes. They kind of remind me of the biblically accurate angels and the eyes they have. Although, I doubt that's what they're meant to be.

24 - Cigarette

People seem to think this relates more to Badlands, and I’m inclined to agree.

Themes:

Here are overall themes that seem to be present within the collection.

- Travelling

- Magic

- 60s-70s

- Eyes

- Books

- A Feminist Lens

- Past albums

A Tangent on Web Dev:

I just kinda wanted to point out the cool coding stuff they've done. When the patches are still in the plastic bag, they're always randomized in which order they're in (you have to refresh to notice this). They also disperse in a randomized order. I thought maybe the way they disperse could be a trail of sorts, like a map. But it seems totally random. I still find it cool how they've done that, every time in a different location, as if you open the package they come out uniquely for each person.

Oh and about the 25 patch, it seems the first patch in your packet appears twice when you open it. Idk if the number 25 matters or if this was done by accident. But the 25th patch is a duplicate, and never one in particular, just which ever is the first in your shuffle.

The End

For now.

#halsey #H5 #for my last trick #music

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