Being raised by areligious jews with 0 exposure to christianity outside pop culture is so fun. One time I asked my ex-catholic friend why a picture of jesus had a bristle crown and she looked at me like I was insane. One time I heard someone mention the “lance of longinus” and responded, word for word, “Like from Evangelion?” One time during a history lesson my professor described an important monk and scholar as “Dominican” and I spent the rest of class super confused and hung up on it because I was very sure that the Dominican Republic didn’t meaningfully exist as an entity back then, maybe she meant he was a native Taino or something but that’s a weird way to say that and I’m pretty sure this was pre- European contact? Really fucks people up when they realize I genuinely have no idea.
This but it’s my partner taking an art history class in college and the professor looking at them like they grew a second head when they answered “What came out of Jesus’ wound when he was stabbed on the cross” with “…Blood?”
Additions that prove my point by mystifying me because what on earth would come out of a nail wound besides blood. Are you telling me it was something besides blood. What was jesus full of that wasn’t blood. You guys are scaring me
Apparently it was water?? I guess he was also stabbed on top of being crucified (which feels like overkill imo) and water came out, which was a huge deal in medieval symbolism and also to my medieval poetry professor, who was genuinely shocked and upset that I didn’t know. This man fully docked me points because I, a whole ass Jew, hadn’t somehow heard about the secret waterballoon Jesus lore that I guess everyone is supposed to like… intuit
On the plus side, it does lead to some absolutely wild medieval Jesus art of angels tapping him like a fucking keg
a friend of a friend went to go see passion of the christ for kicks without knowing anything about the story
when jesus was hauled up on the cross he turned to my friend and said, in all evident sincerity, ‘i know they’re not going to kill the main character but how’s jesus getting out of this one?’
Sticking my fingers in my ears and shutting my eyes while social media implodes by posting a backlog of WIPs.
my store is open with new preorders! i need some help paying a hefty dental bill because i don’t have insurance, so anything helps- even a sticker. or a reblog!
Imagine trying to get back into posting art onto social media while the Only Site People Use is imploding. I graduated and truly this feels like that one gif from Community of the apartment on fire.
I’ve got these two sewing machines, made about 100 years apart. An old treadle machine from around 1920-1930, that I pulled out of the trash on a rainy day, and a new Brother sewing machine from around 2020.
I’ve always known planned obsolescence was a thing, but I never knew just how insidious it was till I started looking at these two side by side.
I wasn’t feeling hopeful at first that I’d actually be able to fix the old one, I found it in the trash at 2 am in a thunderstorm. It was rusty, dusty, soggy, squeaky, missing parts, and 100 years old.
How do you even find specialized parts 100 years later? Well, easily, it turns out. The manufacturers at the time didn’t just make parts backwards compatible to be consistent across the years, but also interchangeable across brands! Imagine that today, being able to grab a part from an old iPhone to fix your Android.
Anyway, 6 months into having them both, I can confidently say that my busted up trash machine is far better than my new one, or any consumer-grade sewing machine on the market.
Old Machine Guts
The old machine? Can sew through a pile of leather thicker than my fingers like it’s nothing. (it’s actually terrifying and I treat it like a power tool - I’ll never sew drunk on that thing because I’m genuinely afraid it’d sew through a finger!) At high speeds, it’s well balanced and doesn’t shake. The parts are all metal, attached by standard flathead screws, designed to be simple and strong, and easily reachable behind large access doors. The tools I need to work on it? A screwdriver and oil. Lost my screwdriver? That’s OK, a knife works too.
New Machine Guts
The new machine’s skipping stitches now that the plastic parts are starting to wear out. It’s always throwing software errors, and it damn near shakes itself apart at top speed. Look at it’s innards - I could barely fit a boriscope camera that’s about as thick as spaghetti in there let alone my fingers. Very little is attached with standard screws.
And it’s infuriating. I’m an engineer - there’s no damn reason to make high-wear parts out of plastic. Or put them in places they can’t be reached to replace. There’s no reason to make your mechanism so unbalanced it’s reaching the point of failure before reaching it’s own design speed. (Oh yeah there is, it’s corporate greed)
100 years, and your standard home sewing machine has gone from a beast of a machine that can be pulled out of the literal waterlogged trash and repaired - to a machine that eats itself if you sew anything but delicate fast-fashion fabrics that are also designed to fall apart in a few years.
Looking for something modern built to the standard that was set 100 years ago? I’d be looking at industrial machines that are going for thousands of dollars… Used on craigslist. I don’t even want to know what they’d cost new.
We have the technology and knowledge to manufacture “old” sewing machines still. Hell, even better, sewing machines with the mechanical design quality of the old ones, but with more modern features. It would be so easy - at a technical level to start building things well again. Hell, it’s easier to fabricate something sturdy than engineer something to fail at just the right time. (I have half a mind to see if any of my meche friends with machine shops want to help me fabricate an actually good modern machine lol)
We need to push for right-to-repair laws, and legislation against planned obsolescence. Because it’s honestly shocking how corporate greed has downright sabotaged good design. They’re selling us utter shit, and expecting us to come back for more every financial quarter? I’m over it.
All this to say that domestic cats are, in fact, not a part of nature, in fact they are classified among the top 100 worst invasive species by the Global Invasive Species Database. This is why their presence, and predation, in the environment is so devastating.
As of 2016 cats were implicated in the extinction of 63 species, this is 26% of total distinctions attributed to invasive mammalian predators. That’s 40 species of bird, 21 species of mammals, and 2 species of reptiles. They are considered a threat to the continued existence of 420 species.
I don’t even know how to begin to describe the impact domestic cats have on the environment so here’s a huge list of various studies across the globe.
Do you believe that dogs should be allowed to free-range, to come and go as they please wherever they please? What about ferrets? Rabbits? If you’ve answered “No” to any of these, then why are cats exempt from the basic rules of courtesy other domesticated species are held to?
The idea that “cats want to be free” is an example of anthropomorphizing, or ascribing human emotions to animals. Cats do not have a concept of “freedom,” they do not yearn for something they don’t understand.
That being said, controlled time outdoors can be a good form of enrichment for some cats - this means on a harness and leash accompanied by a person, or in a secure enclosure like a catio. However while some cats may enjoy this others have no interest in, or are actively avoidant of, the outdoors and shouldn’t be forced.
for the record, there is a marked effect of predator animals being outside on local wildlife - essentially, the presence of a predator causes anxiety. This anxiety has major effects on the local wildlife, leading to less reproduction and shorter lifespans.
So. limit the amount of time you take your cat outside, even in a controlled environment. Your cat’s enrichment is not, in fact, more important than the safety and security of local wildlife.
I say this every time the “outdoor cats” debate comes around, but I grew up with a colony of semi-feral outdoor cats as a kid, and I understand why it’s a sensitive topic because I used to feel uncontrollable guilt about not being able to properly care for the cats indoors despite being literally a child.
If you’ve always had indoor-outdoor cats because that’s what you grew up with, because that’s what you thought was best for them, or because that’s what’s considered normal to do, you’re not being called a bad person or an animal abuser or any of those terrible things. Here, I am setting you free from the guilt. We were doing our best, we always have been, and that’s okay, and what matters right now is that our best can be better today than it was yesterday.
With that said, here’s a short list of things that happened to my childhood cats:
euthanized after being run over by a car
run over and immediately killed by a car
euthanized after being found under a bush with her guts hanging out of her
mauled to death by free-roaming dogs
died after contracting a botfly
and those are just the ones we found. So many of them just disappeared one day and never returned, and only one or two lived past 7. They got fleas, ticks, roundworms, tapeworms, botflies, and God knows what else. They got in nasty, bloody fights with other cats. They would come home limping from unexplained injuries. And they would just…stop coming home.
There’s a virus called Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, or FIV, that is basically what it sounds like: the cat equivalent of HIV. Right now (June 2023) there’s reports of bird flu being found in cats in Poland, and bird flu is very much deadly to cats.
If your neighbor or anyone in your area uses rat poison, a rodent can eat it and then kill your cat when your cat eats the rodent. If anyone in your area uses pesticides, those can poison your cat. Cypermethrin, a common insecticide, is HIGHLY toxic to cats.
Keeping a cat inside isn’t cruel, what’s cruel is letting a cat die an awful, painful death at ¼ its natural lifespan.
The environments humans have created are not “the wild,” they are incredibly dangerous for animals, full of cars and toxic poisons, and cats aren’t as adapted to deal with “natural” hazards either anymore. Feral and outdoor cats exist at much higher population densities than a wild predator would and this means their impact on the wildlife is nothing like a wild predator, and also means their diseases and parasites spread like crazy.
Cats can live into their late teens or even early 20’s but outdoor cats rarely make it past 5. Even if YOUR cat is clever enough to avoid all the hazards, so what? Don’t dumb cats deserve to live instead of dying painfully? Some of them are orange, for God’s sake.
Years on the internet and somehow i still click on comments sections with the insanely optimistic idea that I’ll learn something new instead of being subjected to the dumbest motherfuckers online typing like their sole purpose in life is to make me want to end mine
“Wow, what an interesting post! I want to see what sort of fascinating discourse is being generated by the idea posited by the original poster” <- Me, operating under levels of delusion yet unexplained by modern science
i’ll look forward to hearing your statement if you ever make it out
Do americans actually live like this
Ai generated photo right. Right?
that looks like an entirely normal suburban american neighborhood so if its AI-generated, it’s realistically done.
So the rest of the world watches our movies and in a lot of our movies we mock and satirize the eeriness and soullessness of these manufactured communities but I’m guessing you guys thought it was exaggeration
Okay I’ll elaborate further:
America does have cute quaint little suburbs as well, but also many many gated communities and housing developments designed to be built as quickly, cheaply and easily as possible. They completely clear a patch of land first, literally they dig it down to an expanse of barren dirt and then they carpet it with grass and erect these literally mass produced houses on it. These places are expensive to live in and they enforce rules that you can’t decorate your yard or the outside of your house any differently from the other homes.
The area where I grew up used to be rolling hills and forests and is now 90% these places in just my lifetime.
Some non Americans also think the two hour walk is exaggerated but even without living in one of these, for most of my life walking to a grocery store in America would have taken longer than that. America is spread out over a gigantic continent and there are no laws or rules ensuring that there’s food for sale within so many miles of residences or anything. Public transportation doesn’t go everywhere, either. I didn’t even see a real city bus until maybe my later 20s.
In most of this country you’re completely fucked if you don’t have access to a car. None of this ever occurred to me as unusual until I saw so many people from around the world just aghast at it all. We grow up here just assuming it’s using the same template for society as everywhere else.
Very important to note that these places also very often have irregular street layouts to try and SEEM quaint, so unless you cut through people’s yards (which is illegal and likely to get the cops called on you in a lot of places), you’ll have to take a winding, often deliberately obtuse route. So a trip that would be 15 minutes by car if streets were laid out in a grid often gets extended to 30 or 45 minutes, because everything is so spread out and indirect.
Also, it’s not that there aren’t laws or rules ensuring there are places to get food in residential areas, there are laws and rules ensuring there AREN’T places to get food.
Most housing in the US is in areas that are zoned as R-1, which means the only things allowed to be built there are single-family, detached houses. No stores/shops, no multiplexes, no apartments. MAYBE a public park and MAYBE one or two administrative buildings, but don’t hold your breath on those.
If you want to go shopping, you’ll need to drive down to a shopping center. Because you have to drive there, the roads are designed for an extremely high volume of traffic, so many places have stores sitting on four to eight lane roads with traffic speeds of at least 45 mph (about 70kph), with no sidewalks, multiple intersections with other four to eight lane roads, and frequent places where drivers are entering and exiting the traffic flow to and from parking lots.
Those areas often wind up with their landscapes dominated by billboard ads for personal injury lawyers who will represent you if you’re in a traffic accident.
as an urban planner, I want everyone to know how much this hellscape is desired by the white middle class (the target market for these developments).
This is the result of
Individualist society whose driven purpose of settlement is becoming a “king of their own castle”
Settler colonial society needing to occupy and waste as much land as possible to initiate its colonization
Capitalist society that develops what’s cheapest.
Patriarchal society that isolates families to be ruled by a father.
Classist society that needs to create barriers to entry.
Police/war society that wants to maximize surveillance.
Cultureless white society that can’t imagine a built environment that fosters social cultural development.
I could expand but the USA has this lifeless surreal development because it itself is a lifeless simulated society that drives settler colonial expansion within the confines of capitalism.
When I lived in America some years ago, I walked my dog through one of these places at 2am and had the police called on me twice
playing pentiment (fantastic fucking game by the way) has really reminded me how crazy disco elysium is from a production standpoint. i mean who in their right mind would not only make the decision to have a game with that many branching dialogue paths, but to have it almost entirely voice acted! that’s nuts! all those additional lines, all those additional dialogue clips for something only a small fraction of players will actually see!
the portion of the introduction kurvitz wrote for the artbook is constantly on my mind
my friend liz downloaded some free audio software a few months ago to do something and now every time she joins a call a female voice says “trial. trial.” and liz doesn’t remember the name of the software or know how to stop it and she doesn’t want to
my friend liz had her spotify account hacked and literally didn’t realize for a year until I was talking about my decade in review playlist and she looked at hers and it was all brazilian music and she was like oh this explains why I would go to sleep listening to classical music and wake up and it’s playing trap. and also why there are like 30 playlists on my account that I didn’t make. she just thought spotify was like that
hand to god at some point my friend liz managed to fuck up her install of Portal so bad that it was displaying minecraft textures
