Ask us anything!

Your honor. It's true that a first glance at the evidence would suggest my client was responsible. But let's look a little further, shall we?

I have here a reverse image search for the crime scene as well as my client's photo.

And if you look closely at the results...

The blogs and dates don't match.

My client has been framed!

And why? Because their iconic "mischievous smile" makes for a funnier post, of course. But nothing, not even Tumblr notes, is more important than the truth!

I present to you: The original unaltered post and the true culprit!

Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.

We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]

But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?

So, not sure how it's going on other social media, but The Hunger Games – that will be referred to as THG in this little "essay" – is having a massive "renaissance" all over TikTok. And I've seen, more than once, unfortunately, people saying that Gen Z people have bad media literacy.

My issue with that is one specific argument. One about the people who have been genuinely surprised with nuances and details they didn't notice in the first they read it.

Which's such a stupid argument. Even more when, as I've seen, made by people who read the books as they came out and watched the movies as they came out. They tend to be in the younger side of the Millennials.

Do you know when Gen Zs were born? Here:

So, let's say the specific years are from 1995 up to 2013.

Here's when the trilogy was originally published;

As you see: a significant part of this generation couldn't read or wasn't even born when these books came out. That's how young this generation is.

But also, the oldest ones were between 13 and 16 as the books came out. It's unfair to expect that a 13-year-old will read THG and see the same subtext and nuances and have the same interpretation as people 18-and-above.

It's not bad media literacy that someone in their mid-to-late 20s is seeing things in a trilogy they've read ten or more years ago.

I, for example, read these books in 2013. They came out in 2010/1/2 in Brazil. I borrowed them from a classmate who had the money to buy them as they came out here. I was 15. Then got my hands on PDFs and read them in English later in the same year, I was 16. I never noticed a lot of subtext and nuances and shit when I read them ten years ago.

Both because of course I wouldn't, I was a teenager. And I read it as an escapism for some stuff. They were fun. I read the trilogy in a week – which's fast when you have school, schoolwork, almost all the home chores and the responsibility of taking care of an adult – and I wasn't looking for anything but a distraction. For a little bit of fun.

People roughly my age are seeing these videos and talks and are learning details and nuances they didn't before. It's fun, it's nice. I'm having a blast to re-read those books aware that they're more than what I thought they were back in the day.

It's safe to say the films represented a massive uptick in the book's readership

A whole thesis paper can be written about the films and how they handle and mishandle the themes if the books and the inherent irony of adaptation of books about the spectacle of child mortality and war becoming itself a spectacle. I won't get into all the details here but it's likely a lot of people saw the movies before reading the books. Instead of going into those details I want to focus on some of the paratext at this time in the height of the franchise's popularity:

Here's Subway's Catching Fire promotional sweepstakes saying "have you ever wanted to participate in the child murder spectacle? Shop at Subway!"

After the first Mockingjay movie came out the messaging switched from "killing kids for sport is cool!" to "fighting in a civil war is fun!" Hasbrp released the Nerf Rebel line of toys, better known as "💖Nerf guns for girls🌷" which was meant to capitalize off of young girls who were fans of the Hunger Games franchise (as well as Disney's Brave, though the marketing is very obviously skewed towards one of these with the braids and bird wings and grungy graphics)

Really reminds me of the cheesy propaganda scene in Mockingjay like "JOIN. THE. FIGHT." that's clearly meant to be a parody of military propaganda but was absolutely taken way too self-seriously and even used in trailers for the film.

Finally there's the rise of YA Dystopia as a canonized genre and all the tropes that come with it in both literature and film. This was arguably made possible by the success of the Hunger Games franchise singlehandedly. While there are better and worse entries (each with their own butchered film adaptations) in the YA Dystopia genre, our associations with the genre as a whole sort of flies in the face of the Hunger Games' core themes

And the cultural shockwaves of that genre and its dissonant amalgamation of themes and aesthetics are still seen today in those shitty "the number above your head is how many breaths your allowed to take" "you can have one of 4 colors as your super power and I just got my color but it doesn't exist" tiktok videos.

If it’s watery you throw absorbent on it like you do throw up, we use a kitty-litter type clay based absorbent. You put a trash bag in the dust pan and sweep it all into the bag.

Takes me 15 minutes to clean an absolutely destroyed bathroom stall in a place that sees THOUSANDS of people daily. It’s a shopping and restaurant area that opens up into a nightlife location after 5pm, with some bars opening at 3pm and several restaurants becoming full nightclubs after 9pm. You pay for parking, but anyone can walk in off the sidewalk and not pay a dime and just hang out until 2am.

On a busy night I cover 3 location’s restrooms (2 venues have multiple rr) but on slow days I’m covering around 7. 7 buildings, thousands of drunks, I get a LOT of bio spills.

Our sharps containers are toolbox-looking things that hang on the wall with a flap that allows things to go in but not come out, ever (rip to like 5 phones that I know of), when full it gets closed, locked, and sent to be incinerated. I literally never touch a needle anymore. If I find one on the ground outside we have sharps shuttles which are long plastic tubes that look like giant tampons with a flip top, you put it on the ground, step on it to hold in place, and sweep the sharp into it. Takes like 20 seconds.

taking a piece of text that someone probably put their heart and soul into creating and using it as your raw material, cutting out everything that you deem irrelevant to the point you want to make

i mean imagine cutting up a painting and using it to make a collage, or taking a marble sculpture and carving pieces out of it to make a different sculpture

As I said on another thread: this is not a bug this is a feature of capitalism. It’s bullshit.

and then every single other channel out there thought “hm. why are we using a third party site to do what WE could do ourselves?” except not a single one of them had enough material in their libraries to do what netflix was doing. but they still pulled all their content out of netflix anyway and tried to do what netflix was doing. and then disney decided to do it as well, which… essentially just killed netflix.

but not only did they kill netflix, they just restarted cable! the whole point of a streaming service was being able to watch one show in one go, over a weekend or something. but bc these services don’t have enough material to keep people invested on paying every month, they have… to…. release shows one episode at a time, so that by the time one show ends they can roll out a new one and keep the subscriptions. which just? defeats the point?

When I was a kid, between six and fifteen, one of our Pyrenees would escort me, off-leash, between my grandmother's house and mine. I'd just have to call him, and he'd show up and walk me there, placing himself between me and anything he considered threatening- Cranky farm animals, holes in the ground, bodies of water, etc.

That same dog found a (unfortunately deceased) lamb my grandfather had buried a few hours earlier, dug it up, realized it was cold and not breathing, and carefully carried it to our barn, where he covered it neck-deep in straw and tried to cuddle it warm again to bring it back to life.

One of our older dogs, at about sixteen years old (keep in mind, this breed tends to average out at about 12 years max) had arthritis in his hips, a bad back, and a respiratory issue, was fucking ancient and essentially palliative, but would still go stock-still out of nowhere, let out one subtle "boof", and then set out at an awkward-yet-speedy bunny-hop sprint at the slightest whiff of a cougar, bear, or wolf. Like, grampa would jump fences. Gentle geriatric giant would kick up to 7k to protect the family, never mind the three other, much younger fogs already on the case.

When I was a baby, like a literal in-diapers infant, he would lay on the ground and let me dress him up as a wizard and crawl all over him with zero complaint.

His nephew was 100lbs and often alarmed visitors who mistook him for a bear, yet never so much as bumped into a person in his life and feared only string and kittens.

[deep down we are the same person]

There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone."

Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.

Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.

"Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

my fucking god these tags aged me 50 years

presumably anti skip technology has evolved since then and actually reliably works now (if you jolt a cd drive when it’s playing the laser reading it will also jolt around and songs will skip - not useful when walking. anti skip technology is meant to stabilise so it doesn’t happen. very rarely was this actually the fucking case)

you’d carry around a little flip folder of CDs like this in your bag

often containing at least one mixtape cd you burned yourself, or that someone else had made you, with the tracklist written on it in sharpie