#staranise

StarAnise...

Provide your services in both flavor and health. In time spread across cultures and taste lines. Able to be used both whole or ground. Bring Your peppery sweet essence to my broths and stews all the way around. Like a star from nature able to be held in my hands; bring out all that you can from one's meals this is all that can be asked.

image: Select whole pods of organic star anise (illicium verum)

Someone in my notes literally just went “Anyway most censorship these days doesn’t target LGBTQ+ stuff disproportionately, it only goes after really bad stuff like CSEM! So we should definitely bring widespread media censorship back!”

You know why the owners of LGBTQ+ bookstores in Canada don’t have to illegally smuggle most of their stock in over the border in the trunk of their cars anymore?

Because LGBTQ+ people spent decades fighting censorship you absolute walnut.

When we permit censorship, it absolutely falls hardest on the most marginalized people and gives privileged people’s art a pass. Saying “Censorship isn’t that bad these days so we should expand it” is literally saying “We got that social ill under control now so it’s time to take all the brakes off again.”

wreck-it-remy2

Also, it still happens. Pretty much all social media has algorithms that target marginalized groups.

Instagram values models above all else, and is owned by facebook, so any issues facebook has with censoring, Instagram has too.

YouTube censors queer people under the guise of protecting children from sensitive material. This means sex education gets hit hardest, even when it is about hormone changes for trans people.

Tiktok shadowbans people of color, fat people, queer people, disabled people, and probably a ton more I’m not aware of. They literally deleted fat people’s accounts to “protect them from bullying”.

Tumblr banned n$fw material, and we know how well that went. I’m a sex repulsed asexual. I saw more of that stuff after the ban than before because everyone is afraid to tag things now. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that directing people to Only Fans became popular shortly after that ban.

And these are just the things I’m aware of.

Censoring is bad, and if you don’t realize that, then you’re not paying attention.

One could argue that being censored makes one marginalized in the first place. But of course you actually mean “groups I already agree are marginalized because of immutable traits”.

If you only care about censorship when you think it harms groups you care about, you’re not really against censorship.

Well this is way cool - two possible solutions on the Problem of Princess Buttercup.

**

... As part of making the novel a satire, Goldman toys with this veneer of misogyny that isn't nearly as clever or cute as he thinks it is, and part of that is deliberately writing Buttercup as this kind of insipid, vapid, pretty-but-ain't-that-bright kind of person, so when she says, "Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I’ve got a mind, Westley. Talk about that," it's kind of comedic, and Westley conveniently says he'll talk about it later so the plot can move along and then never does. But the movie is not a satire. It's a true story, truer than most things that have ever happened in my life. "I want my father back" is one of those lines that's seared on our collective souls. So the movie has this absence, this lurking shadow where something should be. For the entire plot to happen, Buttercup needs just let Humperdinck carry her off and make her a princess and engage himself to her, and never really minded it or had second thoughts at all until her abduction. She was just ~consumed by emptiness~ and passive. She goes without having a motivation for five years. And yes, I live with chronic depression, I get that that happens, but then it's like... Do something with it. If she's that consumed by emptiness, how about: She doesn't mind when she's kidnapped. They threaten to kill her and she's like "I mean, I'm dead already, do your worst" If she jumps out of the boat and something in the water might kill her, she's like, Okay sure, might as well. When they get to the top of the Cliffs of Insanity, one of her kidnappers should have to pull her back when she wanders back to the lip of the cliff and looks down it, curiously... and makes riveting eye contact with the man in black climbing up the rope. Make the void do something. But what if we fill that void? In the days before she knew she was in love, she tinkled out little tunes on her lute, and could rhyme blue and true as well as the next farmer's daughter. But it was really when her farm boy went off to seek his fortune that her poems became... notable. Sometimes about the intensity of her imagery, the plaintive note in her voice, made people want to listen to her. For all her beauty, sometimes people closed their eyes when they heard her sing about her love, her joy in finding him, her sorrow at his going away, her hope of his swift return. So when they heard he'd been murdered by pirates, she and her listeners were devastated...

So the Dread Pirate Roberts, on his new ship, heard the news in the form of a quarrel: If a poet is famous for her fidelity to her lost love, and now she's marrying someone else, does that mean she really loved him after all? Did she really?

**

Fascinating stuff.

“Happy day” Yule spell for a cozy coffee break free of any harmful emotion.

-Coffee: vitality, rejuvenation, strength -Sugar: joy, innocence, cleansing -Milk or cream: nourishment, protection, harmony -Cocoa powder: love, joy, harmony -Staranise: happiness, luck, success, peace -Cinnamon stick: success, luck, protection -Ground nutmeg: protection, banishing, vitality -Vanilla essence: happiness, cleansing, peace

Stir counterclockwise to get rid of all negativity. Don’t put too much spice or it’ll be too strong. If you’re vegan you can opt out of the milk or replace it with whatever you choose.

Drink warm alongside with a loved one, a good book, or a nice show.