Lately I’ve been reflecting on how many people are dying from covid and how cool we are with that (“we” being a nation). I’m in the group still masking because I’d rather not get any of the ambient illnesses, or spread them to people even more vulnerable than me, but people are really Done With It.
Folks have *zero* interest in remembering the pandemic occurred, much less that the ongoing impact is a level of death and disability we should absolutely not accept, but the machine keeps going on.
More blood for the blood god!
Has it actually been like this my whole life? Like, this feeling that things are happening that should definitely make us stop and reflect as a nation, but everyone moved on willfully? And the difference now is that I didn’t get pulled along this time because I’m more aware, older, more vulnerable to long-term health impacts…?
The news continues, anyway, and so do we.
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As a side note, there are a lot of Deals going on for Black Friday, and I’m repulsed by the whole thing so we’re not looking at sales. But I will remind you that any sale costs too much money if you don’t need the thing. Overwhelmingly, you do not need the thing. (I’m speaking to myself.)
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A major app (Engadget) using a word like “rizz” means that this probably died as slang six months ago.
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Sorry Tim, the world is not kind enough to lie about something this horrible.
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Psyche: What is it about film and TV antiheroes that’s so captivating?
Our research seems to suggest that people want to know why immoral people do what they do. They want to know what makes bad people bad.
I have so many thinky thoughts about this, it might be a post later.
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Immigration conditions in America appear to be inhumane in a new way.
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Starfield got a big update. I found it not-very-playable on launch day, so this is nice. I’m sure I’ll be playing it very heavily modded in a few months.
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On Lawyers Guns & Money, I learned that Peter Thiel fundamentally misunderstands Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, and elves.
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The New Yorker: The Next Power Plant is on the Roof and in the Basement
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Uhh. Are we still using the words “reverse harem”? Are we uh…committing to that one? Like, are we SURE?
Here’s a read from Stitch about it, mentioning how orientalist the whole “harem” romance genre is
And if we’re going to be honest: the harem genre in romance pulls from the harem romance in Japanese manga but also, the idea of ~the harem~ comes from orientalist fantasies about the ~Middle East~ that were popularized around the Victorian Era that built eroticism atop the harem in a super exotifying and definitely racist way.
So a) this subgenre needs a name change, and b) this is all Queen Victoria’s fault.
Obviously.
The main thrust of the point is how hetero the genre manages to be, but as a queerbo, I don’t mind ignoring the hets. I do it all the time.
