Oliver. 22. He/him/his. Jewish. Hella gay. Fan of lots of things. I don't put a lot of effort into this blog.
The cover photo (on mobile) is my cat, Ghost. He's my everything.
u ever think abt how straight people can easily understand that a character like ryan from hsm is gay even though he was paired off w a female character but blow their stacks if you say like Batman is gay because their ability to witness and understand someones gayness isnt based on that persons actual comfort and fulfillment with partners depending on gender but rather based on whether they represent a stereotype.. ryan is flamboyant/fashionable/ditzy/sassy so of course hes gay even though they tell you hes not… batman is tough/cool/masculine so even though his relationships with women usually come off as uncomfortable and loveless vs his relationship with superman which is always very focused and passionate, Obviously Hes Heterosexual. its a silly thing but its just so obvious how straight ppl conceptualize gayness (& bisexuality too but thats another post)
Annnnd our parents and grandparents never taught us basic life skills because the baby boomer generation loved outsourcing easy work, like hemming pants and baking cakes. The generations before us glommed onto the fast, easy fix, and important skills have been lost in the process.
(And of course the generation who raised us loves to act fake shocked like “my grandkids don’t know how to boil water” like yeah, Janice, that’s because you took your kids out to eat 6 nights a week and baked Stouffers lasagna one night)
And now we are broke. And can’t afford to pay $60 to have every pair of pants we own hemmed (shoutout to shorties!). We are making yogurt because we can’t afford to pay $2.50 for one yogurt.
I’ve learned to knit to make myself wool hats and scarves. I’ve learned to sew so I can make items that would otherwise cost me 4x the cost to make it. I’ve learned to make yogurt because I would prefer to spend $2 for a gallon of milk and get 24 yogurts out of it rather than just one.
I’ve planted fruit trees in my yard so I can reduce the carbon footprint of the fruit I eat, and because produce is expensive.
I raise egg-laying chickens so I don’t contribute to factory farming.
My husband hunts deer so that we can eat lean, virtually fat free meat, and also not contribute to factory farming. The deer live happy lives and are not allowed to suffer. (Hey PS also, hunting up here plays an important role in ecology, as otherwise the deer population would explode, and deer would starve in the winter. Thanks for coming to my TEDta…)
My generation is going on YouTube to learn to change tires, bake bread and do their taxes because y’all sure as shit didn’t teach us.
THIS
Lets not forget the phasing out of the HomeEc class. Or the Shop Class.
Alleviating one’s ignorance of a subject should NEVER, EVER be looked down on! Learning and growing are never anything to be shamed of, or for!
I have a family friend who worked at our local Salvation Army headquarters as a a secretary. This particular office took all the Christmas donations for children in need, put them in a warehouse, and on a designated day the staff and their friends picked through them all, taking whatever they wanted. She saw people hauling away bikes donated for specific families. Some local children had hundreds of dollars of gifts donated in their name, and on Christmas they received three cheap things, items likely not even from the person who sponsored them.
My friend quit, and I’ve not given them a dime of my money since then.
when the capitalists die out either thru global warming or revolution will we be able to start homegrown internet
been reading about dual power and how to grow my own tomatoes and i’m wondering how and if we’ll be able to start commie internet lol
like obviously the internet is this huge electric capitalist controlled hardware infrastructure thing so after all that shuts down is there a way to do it ourselves lol
i want to come home from a hard day on the communal allotment, kiss my Wife, crank up my generator, and start sharing meams!
GOOD NEWS: the homegrown commie internet is in the works! Across the world, people fighting against censorship and for a more democratic internet are building mesh networks (meshnets) of long-range wifi (LoRa)
Since wifi is just a standard for sending data through radio waves, and radio waves can go a pretty long way if you use ‘em right, it’s not that difficult to connect two computers by wifi from across town. Then you just keep adding more computers to the network and you’ve got internet!
As for sharing fresh mëmês, the network to go to is Scuttlebutt. Unlike most social media, Scuttlebutt posts are stored on your computer and sent directly to your friends’ computers (rather than being stored on the cloud and sent to a central server). It works just fine over traditional internet, but you can also view and interact with it offline, and it has protocols for connecting over any means that two computers can share information - that includes LoRa, as well as hardwired connections, sneakernet (basically mailing a USB stick back and forth), etc
What that means is you always know that your info is just as safe as the network it’s sent on and the computer that receives it - no one even theoretically has the ability to collect and sell it all. And, since it’s all run on your computer, there’s no servers to go down or companies to go out of business that could destroy the whole thing
You can read more about this kind of stuff here (or here if it’s cloudy in Barcelona)!
there’s also the work being done by the DCPT, left-behind Detroiters meshing together their neighborhoods to share overpriced high-speed connections among the community and producing these good good educational documents, especially this rad resource page. building meshnets to share a global uplink is very similar to building meshnets for the purpose of intracommunication and these resources are useful in both cases
I’ve had a couple people ask about how to join/organize something like this, which is great! The best list of active projects I know of is here, though you should also do a search online if you don’t see one in your area in case they missed it. For those without a nearby group, put a pin here and try contacting nearby pins as well - you can use the instructions on buildyourowninter.net as well as the DCPT’s resources as linked above to get set up!
Please reblog this version so others can get involved!
So this is just a PSA, y'all should never sign a contract until you read it. I’m talking in rl right now. I just got through reading my employee handbook/service contract and my bosses slipped in a lot of bullshit like telling me I can’t complain about my job on social media, demanding I work off the clock in the name of good service, expects me to show up on time during inclimate weather, and considered disability or religious accommodation a direct threat to the company.
These are all things I took issue with and brought to my employer for further discussion before signing the contract. Most of my coworkers signed without reading, treating it like an internet terms of service contract.
Tl;dr real life is serious shit, lawyers write contracts to protect your employer FROM YOU, read contracts before you sign them - fucking ARGUE about contracts before you sign them
Also important to note, and something my bf has repeated to me many times: a contract is a negotiation until it is signed, and YOU ARE ALLOWED TO AMEND IT. Tech companies often put some bs in there about “we own everything you make while you work for us” which broadly applied also means anything done on your own time. He always ALWAYS does write-in amendments with initial and date to state that they only own things done FOR the company, on company time, because there have been companies that enforced that bullshit when somebody had a personal side project the company decided they wanted to steal. There’s only one company that threw a fit at his attempts to amend it and he considered that a huge red flag and refused to sign, turned down the job.
Never. EVER. Sign shit without reading it. Also: if your prospective employer won’t let you take the thing home to read before you sign it and says you need to sign it then and there THAT IS A RED FLAG. The job I had that turned out to be abusive as shit was like that. Every other job I’ve been able to bring the contract home to my parents to have a more experienced set of eyes on it. It’s also common practice in some fields to have one’s attorney look over it before signing. So never let them tell you that you can’t look over it with someone else. That’s a fat load of shit. For “lower level” jobs they may not accept amendments to the contract but if they won’t even give you the proper time to read it over, they’re trying to pull some bullshit on you and you’re going to regret it if you sign. Even if there’s nothing bad in what you signed it’s an example of how they are going to treat you while you’re there. Take it to heart and run like fucking hell.
Please also tell your coworkers. Inform others. Tell everyone. Please, for the lovee of everything TELL PEOPLE THEY ARE ALLOWED TO DO THESE THINGS.
Companies BANK on the fact you’re not going to read it. Then they slip in shit like ‘you can’t talk about your wages’ because they want you to keep quiet, so thy can pay that guy six bucks, and pay the guy over there fifteen and pay you eight. They want you to accept it all blindly. PLEASE DON’T STAY BLIND.
Yes, I’ve lost out on jobs because I wanted to read it and they didn’t want me to. Or they wanted m to resign and I said no to to the things they added that I pointed out were unfair and borderline illegal.
Read shit. Tell everyone else to read shit. BE INFORMED.
Absolutely 100% good advice ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
Never ever ever sign shit without reading and re-reading it! Take it home, show it to someone more experienced, if you can, show it to a lawyer. A contract is supposed to work for both sides. A company in Toronto tried to make me sign a contract with clause that in event of me leaving the job I will not work in a similar position anywhere in Ontario. Yeah, right, not enforceable in court, dudes, you can’t prevent me from making a living. Read the shit and don’t let them intimidate you.
Hi. I‘m a lawyer. Ask for at least 24 hours before you sign a work contract. You do not have to sign within 30 seconds of the contract hitting the desk. It is absolutely standard procedure. It gives you time to show it to a lawyer or go to a public counselor and have them look it over. In-room signing is another way companies blindside and intimidate you. Don’t be rushed. This is an absolutely normal thing to do. People who try to harangue you or hurry you along are sketchy.
The Phantom Menace is the best movie ever because the entire premise is essentially “Amazon has obtained its own private army and now two future samurai have to stop it from forcing Natalie Portman’s planet to use its services by cutting through Jeff Bezos’s army of robots and attempting to convince Congress to do something about it SPOILER WARNING Congress doesn’t do anything so Natalie Portman has to take matters into her own hands also the day is saved by a redneck kid the samurai picked up when the car broke down”.
The question is actually how the movie managed to suck despite that being the plot
The question is why you listened to people who told you it sucked instead of watching it and enjoying it like a normal person. There’s something new and fun happening in every scene. Secret meetings with shadowy figures, sneak attacks, fierce warriors, elegant queens, stampeding animals, mystical cities, monster attacks, harrowing escapes, whispered conversations, backroom deals, howling storms, thrilling races, ferocious fights, breathtaking skylines, political intrigue, worldbuilding, tests, infiltrations, sieges, rescues, spinning, explosions, all culminating in a fast-paced duel set to one of the most memorable cinematic scores of all time…then ending with a solemn funeral and a joyous parade.
It’s just as important to know how to enjoy a movie as it is to criticize it.
Counterpoint: Jar Jar Binks
You mean the founding father of motion-capture animation characters, the hapless castaway who was given a chance by war heroes because the Jedi value all life, the immature fool who matured upon the sun-scorched sands of a distant planet and the fire-blasted fields beside his home, the sole witness to the Battle of Naboo who survived to watch the Empire fall? That Jar Jar Binks? Frank Oz’s favorite character? Played so passionately by Ahmed Best, the man who nearly committed suicide because of the backlash and malice he suffered following the movie, but refused to do so and endures now to this day producing his own videos and delivering motivational speeches? Is this the Jar Jar Binks you speak of, or did you just jump on the first hate train that stopped by the station and say “well this seems like a fun ride”?
I rarely add onto posts, but if there’s an opportunity to further defend the prequel trilogy, I WILL DO THAT. If you were a kid who grew up with the prequels as your first intro to the star wars franchise, then you’ll also know that the only reason why they were hated SO MUCH was because Older Fans just… didn’t like it. They dictated all the criticisms and effectively made sure that they were the most hated films and that if anyone were to like them, well you just aren’t a good enough star wars fan.
No one’s denying Lucas’ clunky, and sometimes cringey dialogue writing. But I’m absolutely going to argue that TPT added more to the star wars universe than any of the other 6 films had. I’m talking the absolute grandeur of world building, costuming, score, an entirely new fighting style. The CGI is a product of it’s time, BUT we’re talking about a fully relevant narrative about how a democracy collapsed - which, I might add was completely enthralling, smart, and interesting.
All of the actors not only understood their characters, but their arcs, and essentially had an uphill battle of bringing back a 20 year franchise for a fresh audience - this meant pleasing the old fans as well as the new. And if we know anything about the star wars fandom, that was literally an impossible job. None of the star wars films are perfect - I’m definitely including the Original trilogy. But it’s absolutely unfair to treat them like trash when they were actually amazing. Literally just a bunch of neckbeards made you feel bad for having fun and you bought it.
(I’m going on a limb by saying Revenge of the Sith was probably better than any of them.)
Lucas created an incredible origin story for one of the most iconic villains ever. And whether people are willing to accept it or not, it was a goddamn good one. The fact of it is this - this fandom, particularly the old fans, are some of the most elitist and frankly TERRIBLE fans ever. It’s driven several actors to both career ruin, but mental breakdowns simply because they just didn’t like the performances. And the ripple effects have lasted so long because those incredibly loud voices have dictated the General Opinion. This is all despite what the Prequels have done for this franchise’s universe. I urge everyone to go back and try them again!
My dark nerd secret is that the phantom menace is my favorite star wars film.