Today someone said to me"not everything is about colonisation" and all I could think about was the irony that they were wearing a bikini swimsuit.
Bikini is a colonial misspelling of the indigenous name for the Pikinni atoll. It was one of the many places in the Pacific where Western countries tested atomic bombs. In order to carry out the nuclear testing at Bikini, the USA relocated the islanders to an atoll with no shelter, inadequate fresh water, and so little food that some islanders starved to death. They were exposed to radioactive fallout anyway. Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated by the USA, was tested at Bikini and sent radioactive particulate as far away as India, the USA and Europe. After detonating 24 atomic bombs on and around the atoll, the US told the islanders that it was safe to return despite knowing that radiation levels were (and still remain) dangerously high. Generations of islanders are still paying the price with their health and their lives.
The guy who created the bikini swimsuit named it after Bikini Atoll. He said that he wanted it to be "a bombshell" and "explosive" on the scale of a nuclear bomb. He said that "like the bomb, the bikini is small and devastating" and "atom bombs reduce everybody to primitive costume."
The point of this post isn't to suggest that we should stop saying bikini. It's a word in our language now, for better or for worse. My point is that colonialism and white supremacy are in everything. How do you heal, how do you move on, when the violence is embedded into our very vocabulary?
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more good news from tiktok: they’ve started blocking celebrities.
they’re calling it block party 2024. just blocking and ignoring countless celebrities who havent said shit about palestine. influencers, actors, anyone who went to the met gala, whatever, they’re getting blocked. and people keep talking about how cathartic it is, how good it feels, how they never realized they could DO that. there was some kind of subconscious law against blocking famous people, but it’s broken, and people are LOVING it. and it’s WORKING. a social media/digital advertising coordinator was talking about how ad companies are PANICKING, because they can’t accurately target anymore. so many big influencers, including fucking LIZZO started talking about palestine the MOMENT their follower counts started going down. and the best part? no one is forgiving them. lizzo posted a tiktok asking people to donate to palestinian families, and all the comments just said you’re a multimillionaire. put your money where your mouth is. blocked.
i feel like i’m witnessing the downfall of celebrity culture, right here right now. people are waking up.
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[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled "immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]
a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”
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the thing about trying to recommend fiction podcasts to someone who isn't familiar with them is that not only are so so many genres represented but also the level of production can fall anywhere from "basically an audiobook" to "major motion picture minus the pictures"
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every time i think about how armand as rashid is a kind of visual echo of how he looked as amadeo i want to explode
like... his big brown eyes... all his little expressions... his hair...
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The thing about jonmartin is that Martin wants to be a romantic, he loves poetry and probably watches romance but for him it is a fantasy, a silly game he plays. Martin is at his core very cynical. Things don't work out for him so he doesn't really belive in romance, it is a pretty dream but that's it. He is pratical and realist. Dating Jon he has to remind himself it is real and he actually struggles with romantic gestures, it is something he has to remind himself to do, to remind himself he can do even and honestly who even has the energy and what if Jon doesn't even like it?
Jon on the other hand wants to be cynical. His first coping mechanism was pretend the things he was afraid of weren't real and goddam if he isn't afraid of love. It didn't really work to him so far so it's easy to pretend he doesn't care. But he is a romantic at heart. He saw love and he read about it and he has enough evidence that it is undeniable. And to be honest Jon was always to much a bunch of mushy feelings hidden in a grumpy (and bitter and afraid) trench coat. Dating Martin he has to hold himself so he isn't too much. He plays the grumpy unromantic guy at first. But he just can't stop giving flowers and planing dates (this is the guy that saw a theme park on a fear domain and considered how he wanted to take Martin to a romantic ferris whell date [until he discovered Martin was afraid of them]) and making all the silly things one does when in love.
TR: Martin is deep down very cynical about love but wants to/pretends to be a romantic and Jon is deep down very romantic but wants to/pretends to be cynical about love.
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