the unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy or whatever

In the scene where Smoke teaches the young girl how to negotiate, they're standing in front of of a cafe. The shot of them negotiating is framed so that you see a sign in the cafe window advertising a Ham and Eggs breakfast - in other words, a full meal - for 25 cents. The editing makes sure to put that sign back into frame whenever the question of the value of money arises in their discussion.

Smoke offers her 10 cents a minute and asks if that works for her. She says yes. He says no, it does not and tells her to negotiate higher. The 25 cent sign is framed in the shot when he tells her no, reminding us *why* it's not a good value.

She comes back with 50 cents - which the sign has informed us is the cost of *two* meals. Smoke tells her that's too much and counters with 20, which is just under a full meal but we now know that's a fairly respectable price because we just got the high/low contrast of 10 being too little and 50 being too much.

The negotiation ends with her getting 20 cents per minute and we now know 1) 25 cents is the cost of a filling meal in this environment 2) This girl only needs to do five minutes of work to be able to feed herself for a over day (20 cents per minute times five is a dollar, which is four meals) 3) Smoke has the kind of money to throw around that over a day's worth of food for someone can be to him - as it is to our modern eyes - mere pocket change and 4) Smoke's the kind of person who can both be a violent gangster but also care about teaching this girl how to look out for herself so that one day maybe she too can throw over a day's worth of food around like pocket change.

Combined with 5) you can now use that 25 cents = a meal to do the math every other time money gets mentioned in the movie to understand just how much cash the Smoke Stack boys are dealing with.

The intentional evil of Dracula's actions while forcing Jonathan to act like absolutely nothing out of place happens every day in the castle was at first a form of gaslighting, but since it has been subtextually confirmed that the Count already knows how Jonathan is aware of his true nature, the purpose of the actions turn around to simple mental torture.

THANKS FOR HELPING US MEET LOLA'S GOAL! We now have a new GoFundMe that's more directly aimed at her ultimate goal: fleeing Nigeria and going to school in Germany. Nigeria's getting worse, homophobic hate crimes are increasing, and Lola's chances of survival while in the country get narrower by the day. She needs a new life in Germany in order to thrive.

Before we can get her there, Lola needs several things: English entrance exam ($200), rent ($460/mo, or $115/wk), and money for food, transportation, and medicine when she gets sick.

We are asking for allies to donate so that she can finally start living a life of he own. Can anyone help by sharing or offering funds?

Alternate places 🔽:

PayPal: @/angelsaxis (preferred)

CashApp: $Chezri (preferred)

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

BETTE DAVIS as Margo Channing