The Feral Collection

No direction home

The newsreel clips which accompany this voice-over – families trudging along country roads, their belongings stuffed into suitcases and sacks – are all too similar to the footage on nightly news programmes today. But the differences are fascinating. We’ve grown used to seeing displaced people making the arduous journey northwards, over the sea from Africa, and then on through Europe. Casablanca reminds us that, not so long ago, they were travelling in the opposite direction.

When they reach Morocco, many of these people pass the time in its classiest nightspot, Rick’s Café Americain. True, it’s more comfortable than most refugee camps, but the muttered negotiations at its tables will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a documentary about the current crisis: the selling of jewellery for a fraction of its cost; the purchasing of berths on fishing boats for extortionate sums.

And the refugees don’t just trade with jewellery and money. Renault (Claude Rains), the city’s suave French police chief, exchanges exit visas for sexual favours – a transaction which the film views, initially at least, as a harmless game. In one scene, Renault’s assistant comes to his desk and tells him that “another visa problem has come up”. Renault straightens his tie and smiles. “Send her in,” he says. We can respect Curtiz and his team for smuggling such risqué material past the censors, and we can appreciate Rains’ urbane performance. But the film’s forgiving attitude towards Renault’s exploitation hasn’t aged well.

Still, Rick himself is above such abuse. “I don’t buy or sell human beings,” he informs Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), the city’s black-market kingpin. But as time goes by, Rick realises that turning a blind eye to the buying and selling is just as bad. There is a touching scene in which he rigs the café’s roulette wheel so that a Bulgarian newlywed (Joy Page) doesn’t have to sleep with Renault – thus bringing a tear to the eyes of Rick’s employees and to the audience alike. More moving still is the scene in which the café’s head waiter (SZ Sakall) has a brandy with two elderly Austrians who are about to leave for the US, and compliments them on their broken English. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the German director, declared that this humane little sequence boasts “one of the most beautiful pieces of dialogue in the history of film”.

Several other scenes are reported to have had the cast and crew in tears, partly because so many of them were genuine refugees. Veidt may play a Nazi in the film, but in reality he fled from the Nazis. Both Sakall and Curtiz were Hungarian Jews: Sakall’s three sisters and his niece died in concentration camps. “Nearly all of the some seventy-five actors and actresses cast in Casablanca were immigrants,” says Noah Isenberg in his new book about the film, We’ll Always Have Casablanca. “Among the 14 who earned a screen credit, only three were born in the United States: Humphrey Bogart, Dooley Wilson [the Café’s crooning pianist, Sam], and Joy Page.” (One of the film’s subtlest and slyest ironies is that the so-called ‘Café Américain’ isn’t in America and has barely any Americans in it. What, we’re forced to ask, does ‘American’ mean, anyway?)

And so, while the tale of the star-crossed Rick and Ilsa is a Tinseltown fantasy – for a start, there were never any Nazi officers in the real Casablanca – it is underpinned by the cast’s own traumatic experiences. That’s one reason why the film is so potent, whether you’re aware of the actors’ backgrounds or not. “If you think of … those small roles being played by Hollywood actors faking the accents,” wrote Pauline Kael in The New Yorker, “the picture wouldn’t have had anything like the colour and tone it had.”

He wants to demonstrate to the class how this thing called electricity works, so he's going to be bringing in a Firebender, so everybody be cool, we're all friends here... and in walks Princess Azula of the Fire Nation. One-time conqueror of the city. One of the students is currently writing an essay on how her brief rule of the city affected fruit trade. She says she considers the class to still be her subjects as she doesn't acknowledge any pretenders to any of her thrones, but for now you're exempted from bowing and "Your Highness" will do. It's a really interesting lecture.

"Okay, guys - hey, listen up, everyone - I won't be here next week, me and Aang are going to-" yeah right, sure, Professor Sokka knows the Avatar. Except, of course, the Avatar walks in sheepishly and says that Appa might have gotten into Sokka's hybrid crops, and then you all have to sit there and watch your professor chase the Avatar around with a sword.

One postgrad student is specializing in Water Tribe Cultures. She's currently studying the massive cultural shift that happened in the Northern Water Tribe at the end of the war - oh, and Professor, I absolutely know that you're from the Southern Water Tribe, but it's just that the shift started with Master Katara, and of course I don't think that every person from the South knows one another haha it's just that I need to ask her some questions and I thought maybe you could help me write a letter or write a letter of introduction or...

Sokka looks at her blankly and goes "yeah, she's my sister. KATARA!" which is followed by a faint answering "fuck you!" from Somewhere and to the horror/elation of our postgrad, Master Katara bursts in and is promptly beaned in the head with a rock by Professor Sokka. Her brother. her hero and her professor are siblings and currently brawling on the floor.

So the old ace flag, for some reason, had a stripe devoted to ace allies (the white one i believe) and some people took issue with it. This redesign is proposed to make something that represents ace and aspec people more.

As for the main reason a chunk of people don't like it... the pink stripe represents love. A good chunk of the ace community is loveless, so this new "inclusive" design is actually very exclusionary.

From her posts on her substack

Anyways. If you don't like the flag, literally just don't use it.

I made my own flag to represent me just like she did

You can do the same. Or do nothing at all. No one is forcing you to do anything.

Read her own words about why she did this instead of playing telephone

René Lalique, Jasmin Corsage ornament, 1899-1901.

Guys

The magnificent saucebox that is 10-year-old Jane

"he accused me of breaking his nose. to be fair, I had in fact punched him in the nose"

And also

"Hell is where you go when you die if you were bad. How will you avoid going to hell?

"not die"

if you are in pain within minutes or seconds, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.

if you are in extreme pain, not just "ugh my feet ache" pain but "i am going to pass out" pain, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.

I mean, I can walk just fine, but standing in one spot for like 15 to 20 minutes will leave me in pain for days.

eliot has literally killed people and things he’s going to be on his own forever but then gets these two pseudo little siblings who he’s responsible for, and he’s totally cool with parker practically sitting in his lap and jumping out of windows on top of him and hardison babbling in geek in his ear and he has a special handshake with hardison. and hardison was always the most adjusted of the three but finally has people around him that respect what he does and care about his nerdy references and trusts him to do his job

Remember you are a guest in this space. I don’t know a single person who would rather you shit yourself or get assaulted than use the disabled toilet, but please remember that these toilets are built and designed for disabled people after a huge amount of campaigning and activism.

Don’t touch or move things you don’t need to. If you’re not familiar with how things work or why they are where they are just leave it be. The position of a bin might not mean anything to you but it could be really important to a wheelchair user who needs to change their tampon. Don’t touch things like grab rails either – while they’re fairly tough and you’re unlikely to cause any damage it’s not impossible and if you don’t touch it, you can’t break it.

Related, but important enough to have its own point: please don’t touch the red cord. Do not tie it up, do not wrap it around anything, don’t tuck it behind a bin. Don’t touch it (The only exception to this is to untie a cord that’s been tied up) If the cord doesn’t fall freely to the floor it could prevent a disabled person calling for help in an emergency. If you’re worried about accidentally pulling it there’s almost always at least one reset button in there with you. Press that and it cancels the alarm.

If possible allow other people waiting to go first. A lot of disabilities, both visible and less apparent, can cause problems with incontinence, urgency or pain that make it difficult for someone to wait to use the toilet. If there’s someone else in the queue and you are able to do so, offering to let them go first might really help them out.

If you want to get a radar key, get it from disability rights UK or give a small donation to a disability charity (again only if you’re able to). I’ve seen a couple of trans orgs giving away free radar keys and it’s unclear how they are being sourced. Knockoffs are common but only “real” RADAR keys are from Disability Rights UK and any profits help fund their charity work. Bear in mind that most disabled people also have to pay for these keys which are about £5. (Disability Rights UK say their keys are to be sold to disabled people or organisations only, this is a legal thing they have to say about VAT relief. There is no real way of following up how disabled someone who buys a radar key is because you don’t need to claim any benefits to be eligible for VAT relief and keys are a low value item that isn’t worth anyone looking into when things like adapted cars exist. Be gay, do crime, support disabled people having rights.)

Know the difference between a standard accessible toilet and a changing places toilet. Don’t use a changing places toilet if there is any other safe option. These have a different symbol and are bigger and fitted with extra equipment for severely disabled people and our carers. That equipment is more sensitive than anything you’ll find in a standard accessible toilet so if you do find yourself in one touch nothing. Especially don’t move the hoist (lifting equipment) as it can cause it to run out of power and make the whole space functionally useless if it’s not in the right space on the track. (To be fair this is an unlikely scenario as there aren’t that many of these toilets, but just in case)

You know, given how C. lupus, C. lupus familiaris, and C. latrans can all create perfectly viable hybrids, and that the proto-dogs that domestic dogs descended from much more resembled coyotes than wolves, it's not really a surprise that some yotes are experimenting with domestication.

Goddamn that lady must be fucking shredded to be able to chase down a coyote through a swamp.

"Don't let wild animals into your house, you are not going to make Dogs 2.0, you're going to get injured and the animal killed." is probably obvious enough advice that I don't need to put it in the tags as a reminder.

...I know more than four people on this site that have poisoned themselves trying out 'foraging guides' they found online, two people IRL who tried to keep raccoons at pets, and have a family member who got hospitalized for Cat Scratch Fever after grabbing a feral cat bare-handed. This is apparently, not obvious enough.