still i rise;

HBO’s Sopranos: hark at the ducks 🦆 give zero fucks 🦆 in Tony’s pool 🦆 pasta fazool 🍝

Few facts that need correcting here. “Carol of the Bells” is a newer arrangement of an ancient Ukranian folk melody called Shchedryk [wikipedia]. The alto line actually does sound quite haunting if you sing it with the Ukranian lyrics (which have nothing to do with bells or Christmas) instead of the obnoxious “ding dong” English lyrics that Wilhousky wrote in 1936:

I hate this aspect

cats being capable of understanding accidents and even giving you a little head bonk to let you know you're still cool makes it infinitely funnier that they don't understand when you're trying to help them

“‘Girls like you’ your mother says ‘are going to be disappointed a lot.’ She’s chopping coriander so fast that her hand is a blur and you’re 12 and you’re standing like a tremble, grubby knees and tear stained cheeks, an offering in front of her ‘Why?’ Your voice is a quiet shake. She puts the knife down and calls you ‘jaan’ she holds your face in her wet hands, you don’t flinch because this is what love looks like she kisses your forehead like forgiveness ‘because you mean what you say, you think other people are the same.’ She tells you that she spent four years trying to learn their language but people ask how you are and walk away before you can tell them. ‘I’d rather be silent.’ She says. ‘At least being quiet is honest.’ You’ll come home seven years later wearing your heart like a bruise on the inside of your sleeve ‘mama,’ you’ll say, voice like a thunder crack ‘he said he loved me, and I believed him, I shouldn’t have, I think that he lied.’ She’ll be older then, but she’ll kiss you just as tender, just as birdlike. ‘Is it my fault?’ You’ll ask. She is half lioness, half woman. She is all roar. ‘Listen to me’ she calls you her soul again. She says it in your language so you know that she means it. ‘You are so infinitely tender,’ she takes the frown of your face in her hands and holds it carefully ‘People will not always know what to do with that. You can’t ever be sorry for the way you loved, You can’t be sorry for who you loved. Don’t ever let them bend you backwards don’t let them make you hard or bitter.’ Her voice turns into a growl ‘You did not get this from me. Somewhere inside of you there is rain. Somewhere in your stomach, something beautiful is growing and it is infinite. Don’t you let them try and take that from you, you are open and you are a flood, someday someone is going to want to die in you.’”

No one ever talks about the loneliness that permeated Eden. I know why Eve stole the fruit. I know why Pandora opened the jar. Can you really say you don't?

I miss the world before AI image generation

Seven (often stylized as Se7en) is a 1995 American crime thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, with Gwyneth Paltrow and John C. McGinley in supporting roles. Set in an unnamed, crime-ridden city, Seven's narrative follows disenchanted, nearly retired Detective Lieutenant William Somerset (Freeman) and his newly transferred partner David Mills (Pitt) as they try to stop a serial killer from committing a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins.

One last talent show to save the rec center