Pies and Poems love! Rarepair!

Sirius:

my hot take, my hottest take, is that there’s no such thing as being bad at fashion or getting dressed. I am being serious when I say this. Honestly? Socks with sandals are kind of cool when you think about how there are really interestingly patterned socks (I have a pair that features a city sunset, but I saw ones with martinis on them at the thrift today) that you can now avoid hiding in your shoe.

Trends are a pendulum (baggy 90s jeans turning into skinnies past the new millennium, and countless other examples) and you’re going to really do that? Make fun of something until it’s in fashion and everyone’s doing it, at which point everyone has to do it or they’ll be made fun of for not doing it?

Do you see how limiting that is?

There’s a strong chance someone just enjoys wearing whatever they’re wearing that you don’t like. What a crock to think they’re wearing it because they don’t know any better. You don’t know what they’re going for. You don’t know what inspires them. You don’t get to make them feel obligated to care; I enjoy fashion, but there are far more important worries in most people’s minds. You don’t know what colors or cuts or sizes make them feel comfortable and happy and the idea that there are rules in the first place makes me think of how our parents did this to us.

Our parents told us we were funny-looking or pretty when we wore things they did or didn’t want us to wear, because they had that power over us, and now we waste time doing it to each other as displays of dominance. It’s the opposite of accepting another adult’s personal style. Clothes do nothing to you, makeup does nothing to you; they do not change the person underneath them whatsoever. Your clothes do not make you smart or ugly or interesting or childish or mature. That’s an idea we’ve been sold. And it’s one you can let go. What you’re really trying to softly insult without risking a counterattack when you put down someone’s choice of clothing is their personality and the way they express themselves. And that’s a uniquely feminine type of bullying that can leave wounds on your actual sense of self.

I got quite a few questions and responses about why the online brand / website / Facebook page “The Dodo” shouldn’t be supported. Here’s a quick rundown:

Misguided Anti-Captivity. They are often blatantly anti-captivity, or use anti-captivity language and/or promote anti-captivity views. They use language such as an animal is “trapped” in a zoo or an animal was “saved” from a zoo. They actively support and often get quotes from representatives from ZooCheck, an anti-zoo and anti-captivity organization, and support HSUS (Humane Society of the United States). Their reports on tragedies of animals being injured or dying at zoos are overwhelmingly full of blame, toxicity, and disrespect. Their ideas of anti-captivity are incredibly limited and misguided – they are often pro “sanctuary” with the idea that all sanctuaries are better and they rarely discuss any kind of conservation.

Anthropomorphism over Accuracy. They are wildly, ridiculously, inaccurately anthropomorphic. For example, a picture of a bear leaned against a wall is captioned as: “He looks desperate, depressed, despondent. He stares up, seeming to search for a way out.” They described an owl resting on someone’s shoulder as “missing the man who saved her so much she couldn’t stop hugging him.” A kitten “looks at his rescuers face to be reassured everything is okay.  One of their most recent articles is about a cow “shedding tears” and crying because it is sad. Overall, they are much more concerned with ‘tugging on heartstrings’ of animal lovers than with being accurate about animal behavior. 

Unsafe Animal Interactions and Inappropriate Pets. Despite being anti-captivity when it comes to zoos specifically, they have often published videos of exotic pets and/or inappropriate free contact with wild/dangerous animals. 

Lack of Primary Sources and Information. They often lack any resources to accurate information about their “news”. Recently they made a 45-second video which claimed that basically any elephant on display (from a Ringling Circus to a rural south Asian performance) was automatically and certainly being abused and tortured. There were no sources or proof to back this up, no resources to explore, nothing. They rarely have any kind of scientist or animal care worker as a source for any video or article, just activists. 

Stealing and Editing Videos. You’ll notice almost every video on their site is made by them and hosted there, not shared from somewhere else. They take videos from other sources, add music and text, and call it their own. They almost never link to the original source. 

Overall, “The Dodo” is not a news site. It’s a brand. It’s a website designed to get views and make money - it will do anything just to get those clicks. But it tries to sell itself as news, and therein lies the issue. They use strong language, buzzwords, and clickbait titles in order to push a vague, biased agenda that hurts those of us who work in zoos and other animal facilities.

And that’s a damn shame.

Because if you really want to go full cringe? If you really want a case history of terrible marketing, edgy ad campaigns made to appeal–in a terrible way–to young men, with a side helping of wtf, the Nokia N-Gage is your black hole of gaming history to fall into.

Phones weren’t just non-touchscreen in 2003. They were also non-game. Unless you counted Snake or mine had a card-matching game of some sort. The Nokia N-Gage was going to change all that you see. The Nokia N-Gage wasn’t going for the Angry Birds market, which will be resoundingly clear later. They wanted to be the first serious, adult, male-oriented handheld that was also a phone that, according to EGM, had to be held with the long top side awkwardly against your head when you were speaking into it.

Tomb Raider, Sonic Adventure, and Cool Boarders among other big-name titles (back in the day) were ported to this weird phone in order to try to take a bite out of Game Boy’s market share (the Advance SP model had been released February of the same year)

This is where it gets bad you guys.

I never owned one of these phones. But the ads played often on TV. And I saw a lot in magazines. They typically featured toilets and double entendres. And uh. Other things.

This was supposed to promote this new gaming device. This was sincerely supposed to encourage someone to buy this product.

And the print ads really kept the spirit of the TV ads. I saw a lot in gaming magazines like EGM and GamePro.

But. by this logic we’d also need to stop reblogging TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare quotes. Virginia Woolf wrote anti-semetic things in her private journals, too. If you only want to read classic poets who liked Jews and black people, that’s fine, but like. good luck? Sylvia Plath isn’t an exception.

idk. Tumblr’s attitude of “consume nothing problematic” just doesn’t work if you’re part of a group that most culture-creators over the last few centuries have hated by default. For people actually in those groups, it’s not like the only two choices are 1) worship authors who hate you or 2) completely cut the majority of literature out of your life. You learn to read critically and acknowledge flaws where you find them.

anyway, as a Jewish woman, I would much rather see a version of this post that said “please read Sylvia Plath poetry critically because she’s anti black and antisemetic” than just “stop reblogging Sylvia Plath poetry.”

“Don’t consume stuff instead of dealing with it.”

If I ignore its existence then I won’t have to take a layered view on it. 

But guys… anti-semitism is a thing and it’s been a rampant thing for centuries. You can’t ignore that the middle ages or the early 20th century existed. Or heck, the middle of the 20th century in the US. 

People always are a product of their times. And some times where just racist as fuck! That was normal! And that is something you have to look at and look at critically because these times will return. And very normal people who are talented and nice will have very horrible, unthinking opinions. 

That includes you, btw. 

So many people were/are still attacking the young Thai coach trapped inside of a cave with 12 members of the soccer team he helps run, people assumed that he took the boys there for a trip and passed all blame onto him and called for his punishment/jail time when all of this ends. Turns out, the initial reports were not 100% correct. The details are not completely clear, but it seems the boys went to the cave to celebrate the birthday of one of them, and when they failed to return home later that day, their parents got worried and the coach, Ekapol Chanthawong went to search for them. Finding their things at the entrance of the cave, he went in after them to get them out and bring them home. Apparently, the boys wandered deep inside and when he found them, they became trapped by a sudden monsoon and flooding of the cave that came with it, hence why they had to retreat even farther inside. They barely managed to make it there in time, that’s how fast it all happened. He risked his own life trying to save them. The boys had some snacks that they bought for the birthday celebration, and he rationed all of that for the upcoming days, giving the kids his portions. He also taught them meditation to calm them down and help them preserve energy and told them to only drink the water dripping down from the walls of the cave and not the water that flooded in. If it wasn’t for him, this situation could have ended with the worst possible outcome, so please think before you scrutinize him. He already blames himself. Just consider how huge of a psychological trauma this is going to be for all of them.

He was the last of his people! It was his royal sword and he gave it to me to remember him by!

Also, Norse myths are thought to have the earliest literary descriptions of the Norwegian Forest Cat. They were described as large, strong cats that drew Freya’s chariot and were so heavy that not even Thor, God of Thunder, could lift them from the floor. (Source)