afraid & happy

Shane (staring intensely at where puck is about to drop, with the most casual voice): So where're you from, originally?

Player (star struk and also confused enough to answer): uh- wh- um, Texas?

Shane: huh, not much hockey there, how'd you get into it?

Player(excited about talking hockey with Shane Hollander!): yeah, my uncle played for the Maple leafs.

Shane: oh, cool, does he still play?

Player: no, he only played two seasons.

Shane (kindly, like a kindergarten teacher): You might want to follow his lead on that.

And by and large US officers seem to have ignored it. We literally have the records of every flogging (the most extreme form of punishment allowed during these specific years) onboard a naval vessel for the years of 1846-1848 and almost all of the cases that involved homosexual activity "unambiguously refer to male/male homosexual activity involving attempted assaults on children, not consensual couplings between adults."* There are also multiple recorded instances throughout the Victorian Era of an American sailor coming forward with a charge of sexual assault and pulling in other sailors or even officers as witnesses who tell their captain yeah i totally saw them and didn't say anything until this sailor told me it was nonconsensual. There are even records recorded by naval recruitment officers of men with extremely explicit gay tattoos being allowed to join the navy. Why did the US navy not care enough to even include it in the regulations while the British navy literally hanged men for it??? Were we so hard up for sailors that John Adams was like bitch we need every gay sailor we can get????

And weirdly enough this was true on American Whaling ships too! In the recorded cases where homosexual activity led to sailors being disciplined (in some cases punishment so mild as just being dropped off their ship at the next port) it was usually in situations where rape was involved and/or there was a high degree of ship disruption related to it (guys getting into a public knife fight for example). Idk I just think thats so interesting especially when America and England were so similar to be so different in this particular area is fascinating

why do i give a shit about social media restrictions? well, i went to the library three months ago with my two teenage brothers to sign them up for new library cards (they just moved) and i was told that under 18s can't have a library card, even a restricted kids-books-only card, without a parent there in person to give consent.

that's fucked for abused kids for sure but that's also fucked for kids whose single mum works two jobs and can't get to the library while its open. and there is NO good reason for it except to appease parents who want to control what their kids can read.

people coming onto my posts telling me 'kids should just do X' have not actually looked into the possibility of doing what they are suggesting. kids now cannot do what you did when you were a teenager even a decade ago. abused kids, disabled kids or kids from low income families ESPECIALLY cannot do those things. they are running out of places to go.

interviews and studies with teenagers repeatedly prove that they WANT to hang out with their friends in real life, and it is getting harder and harder to do it. the internet is one of the only places they can all spend time together, unsupervised, without spending money or getting hassled or moved on by adults.

The reason WHY Team Beast wants to "create fandom" is because they have an awareness that fandom is something that makes Number Go Up, and they want to have access that sort of loyalty and attention. But fandom isn't really something you create intentionally, it's more of a natural side effect of caring about something a lot, and going about the business of expressing how much you care, and finding community that cares in a similar way. But Mr Beast and his team do not actually care about anything at all, except Number Go Up. Everything Team Beast does is just a random exercise in throwing money at different ideas to see which makes Number Increase More.

Team Beast made chocolate bars because they know their audience of kids likes and buys candy, not because they liked candy or were interested in the process of making good candy. This is how they ended up making a chocolate bar that lacked the pre-sectioned bar shape that any other reputable candy maker has known and utilized for decades.

Team Beast made a reality show, because they know that reality shows are popular, and that Squid Game was a massive cross-cultural phenomenon, not because they care about reality shows, or are interested in telling stories about the limits of human cooperation and integrity in high stress, high rewards situations. This is how they ended up making a reality show with too many people to focus on any sort of interesting individual narratives, filled with elimination challenges that didn't work.