Here and Queer

good news; even David Ellison doesn't hate Avatar that much.

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

animated the "It's okay not to smile" scene from chapter 4

Humanity was at war with an alien species that did nothing but mindlessly consume, and would kill off humanity if it wasn't stopped. This species isn't sentient, it cannot be reasoned or negotiated with, it can only be extermated.

To win this war of extermination requires humanity to unite under an undemocratic government that violates its peoples rights because that's the only way the war can be won. This isn't seen as a bad thing at by the narrative, but as a needed step to win the war. Humans are said to be inherently selfish by the narrative, so the only way they're shown to be able to win agasint an outside threat is to submit to a unilateral and unquestioned authority. No ideological alternative to this is ever seen as even valid to hold by the narrative.

The main character is initially someone who resists risking his life for the war and is framed as a coward for this, but whose forcibly conscripted into this war and eventually saves humanity, and is thankful that he was drafted into thos conflict by the end.

The creator is pretty openly a fascist (though calls himself apolitical and rants about politics in scifi), has gone on anti woke podcasts, and loves ai.

This sounds like a scifi story for fascists. Like, that's something in the wake of the original book of Starship Troppers (which wasn't a deconstruction the way the movie is). It sounds like the type of fiction that 4chan would love. It sounds like a version of 40k that doesn't give lip service to the imperium pretending to be good.

The plot I just described is Project Hail Mary. A movie/book that's really popular with progressives on tumblr.

This is kind of wild right. Like heres an article going into it ->

But beyond that, there's something scary as to why tumblr likes it. Now of course people can like stories that don't fit their politics, but most of tumblr doesn't understand that, and I also don't hear anyone on here talking about how it's literally fascist propaganda but how they still like it for the white man x alien hetero bromance in spite of its politics. I hear people either not talk about its politics at all or try to frame it as woke somehow.

What I think is the main factor is that despite having the classic fascist scifi plot, it frames the people fighting to save humanity as scientists instead of as soldiers. Its Starship Troppers but for the he/him Lockheed Martain engineer building the bomb instead of for the Roman Catholic fighter pilot dropping the bomb. But it still loves the bomb. And I think that's all it takes for a lot of people on here to feel comfortable with something. It lets them see it as a story for smart progressive people like them who believe in science and are trying to make the world a better place, but the philosophy is no different then the furthest right military scifi. It's actually one or the least morally nuanced examples of this plotline I know, it really doesnt throw in anything to let you question it's government. And people here accept it uncritically because it's characters are people who seem like they'd be progressive, and who have jobs progressives like. It's scary to see how easily people here will eat up right wing talking points when they're using progressive sounding words.

The world gave Stratt the power to solve this by violating human rights across the planet. This women signs off on blowing up the artic with a nuclear bomb, kidnapping people for the greater good, and hundreds of other human rights violations. She takes a man who refuses to be on the shuttle for many reasons and sends him on a death mission. This is all placed as a necessary evil in the narrative and while it's acknowledged as fucked up (sometimes) it is brushed aside. Grace says that her plan worked because he cares too much now to give up. Framing it as a "oh it was bad but necessary" which is true but at the same time alternate plans were available. Stratt is given no check to her power there is no balance happening which is bad. Some fans acknowledge it but the vast majority I have seen do not talk about this which is sad since I like to talk political themes in media. But maybe people see this but don't really want to discuss things like unchecked political power I can only hope that is the case.

Warning: Lots of flashing lights

Title: Slice of Ice

Editor: SliceofLife

Studio: Crows AMV Team

Song: Imitation

Artists: Will Stetson x HoYoFair

Anime: Yuri!!! on Ice, Medalist, Skate-Leading Stars, Absolute Duo, Death Parade, unknown anime

Category: Freestyle

instead, all her brainspace spent on that song would be replaced with the vivid memories of roman gladiator, taylaurius velox. she's able to hide this at first, but her music begins to take on a gradually romaner and romaner tint. at first, people are like "damn, she's getting REALLY conservative, huh" and other people are like "wow, she's so deep, she knows what a rubicon is" but eventually travis kelce leaves her out of nowhere (he wasn't sure if dating someone possessed by a roman gladiator made him gay or not and anyway he was getting sick of being like "we're going to play the lions" and taylor being like "LIONS? WHERE?") and taylor publishes an entire brutus themed album about this betrayal and it's beginning to weird people out

and so eventually travis kelce is getting like, bomb threats sent to his family for leaving taylor and eventually he's like "okay, okay, i left her because she kept having all these vivid nightmares of gladatorial combat and she kept saying that football was giving her the ick because we never actually killed anybody for the glory of rome" and then he just gets more bomb threats because he left a struggling woman during a mental health crisis

and eventually taylor is writing music about her forbidden roman senator lover and her fanbase is either whittled WAY down or WAY up because people want to watch this trainwreck happen (or maybe she influences culture so hard that we're just all really into rome now) but she's being super cagey about the name of this roman senator. until. and now here's the twist:

weird al has been getting all of the same vivid memories of taylaurius velox. and he still has all his memories of her old songs. so he's writing all these detailed song parodies of taylor swift songs that don't exist anymore including specific details about their shared gladiatorial reality that taylor has never shared with anybody else. including that her lover's name was publius, and she's been calling him Poob for short

at this point a lot of original swifties are leaving. they could do the brutus stuff, but they really can't survive poob. taylor makes a clapping back at the haters song including the lyric "these bitches don't know publius" and it ends up all over all sorts of merch. there's a renewed archaeological interest in roman gladatorial combat

most importantly, the internet discourse is the best it's ever been. does this make taylor swift transmasc? is travis kelce problematic for leaving his fiancee while she gradually morphs into a roman gladiator? is this good queer representation? if taylaurius velox was a gay man, does that mean the gaylors were technically correct? is weird al morally wrong for capitalizing off of her music if she cant remember it anymore? was weird al sent by god to torment taylor swift?