ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα...

I'm a fucking white guy who can trace my family back to both the Mayflower and the Jamestown colony and these people spend so much time sanctimoniously talking about their vast love and concern for me, all the while pulling money out of my wallet and explaining that hard-working taxpayers like myself will no longer be forced to subsidize moochers like me.

But hey, at least when they beat people and heard them into squalid camps they say that it's a gift to me, and aren't I so grateful that they're looking out for me?

I am stressed out and I also am so fucking tired of listening to the god damn sanctimony of these fucking pieces of shit. About how worried they are and about how I deserve to live in a country that shares my values and how unfair it is that people say mean things about me sometimes until it comes time to provide one concrete thing at which point I suddenly become a moocher and all that America for Americans stuff goes out the window.

Choke. Just think about it, seriously. Think about what choking is and imagine speaking while it’s happening. That would fuckin’ hurt, man.

Hiss. Look, it’s just not possible, okay? No matter how “evil” you want your character to seem.

Snarl. Animals snarls. The Beast from Beauty and the Beast snarls. The Hulk snarls. You know who doesn’t snarl? PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE SPEAKING.

Shriek. Come on, 99% of the time, “shriek” is not the word you want.Let’s face it: if you put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, your reader gets the picture. Don’t bring to mind banshees and screaming toddlers.

Hiss is a low, threatening whisper. Raw, guttural, vicious. It is NOT a literal hiss like an animal, it is a tone of voice that serves the same function. Someone will hiss that they’re going to cut your throat- a message from one person to the other.

Snarl is the same kind of thing. Not literal, it’s a tone of voice that serves the same function. It’s raw and gutteral like a hiss, but more savage than vicious. It’s loud, it’s showy, it’s intimidating. It’s very alpha male, big man, look at how fucking dangerous I am. I’ll take ALL of you on. Even if they’re snarling at one person in particular, nobody better back them up or they’re gonna get fucked up too.

Shriek. Come on, seriously? We’ve all heard people shriek either in fear or outrage. High pitched, loud, out of control, feminine. Men can shriek, but it’s funny and emasculating. Think angry italian women throwing pots and pans or ladies on tables who just saw a mouse.

"Hardison, this thing cannot be in my pantry, get it out of here"

Reverse heist where Parker places it on display in the British Museum

Records changed to make it look like it was wrongly identified as early work by someone who later became intensely famous and respected, and like a lot of money was paid for it

Assorted experts in colonized countries alerted to embarrassing "mistake"

General mockery ensues throughout the art world

Press joins in general mockery

Parker steals painting BACK along with a few other minor artifacts (that happen to quietly find their way back to rightful owners)

British Museum reports actual thefts, is accused of trying to run an insurance scam as no one would take notoriously fake painting

Painting mysteriously appears in background shot of tech billionaire's home interview

Immediate trending topic + virulent online mockery of billionaire's horrible taste

Billionaire doesn't go to jail, but suffers massive reputational damage for unprovable but highly suspicious link to art theft / scam

Billionaire's stock plummets, potentially lucrative deal to buy social media site falls through as result

Painting goes missing AGAIN

At this point every rich person with an art collection is terrified of being linked to the theft

Numerous stolen / looted art items preemptively returned

Meanwhile, painting reappears in Eliot's pantry

Dammit, Hardison!

In the scene where Smoke teaches the young girl how to negotiate, they're standing in front of of a cafe. The shot of them negotiating is framed so that you see a sign in the cafe window advertising a Ham and Eggs breakfast - in other words, a full meal - for 25 cents. The editing makes sure to put that sign back into frame whenever the question of the value of money arises in their discussion.

Smoke offers her 10 cents a minute and asks if that works for her. She says yes. He says no, it does not and tells her to negotiate higher. The 25 cent sign is framed in the shot when he tells her no, reminding us *why* it's not a good value.

She comes back with 50 cents - which the sign has informed us is the cost of *two* meals. Smoke tells her that's too much and counters with 20, which is just under a full meal but we now know that's a fairly respectable price because we just got the high/low contrast of 10 being too little and 50 being too much.

The negotiation ends with her getting 20 cents per minute and we now know 1) 25 cents is the cost of a filling meal in this environment 2) This girl only needs to do five minutes of work to be able to feed herself for a over day (20 cents per minute times five is a dollar, which is four meals) 3) Smoke has the kind of money to throw around that over a day's worth of food for someone can be to him - as it is to our modern eyes - mere pocket change and 4) Smoke's the kind of person who can both be a violent gangster but also care about teaching this girl how to look out for herself so that one day maybe she too can throw over a day's worth of food around like pocket change.

Combined with 5) you can now use that 25 cents = a meal to do the math every other time money gets mentioned in the movie to understand just how much cash the Smoke Stack boys are dealing with.

But this also could just be cheap animation, notice how everyone in this series has the same 'cute' features? I.e the same button nose even with characters played by actors like Finn and Noah with more prominent noses.

which is still a structural bigotry even if it isn’t always intentional; society gets built in such a way that it pushes out and rounds off the edges of difference, such as Jewish ethnicity.

Son: there’s always a librarian. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And it’s a garden, there has to be someone taking care of it or it isn’t really a garden.

Me:

Son: any librarian who hoards a library to themselves is hiding something.

Daughter: /nods seriously/

Son: wouldn’t be a secret library. I have nothing to hide.

Daughter: so not a secret librarian. A good librarian.

This is a spot from an italian estate agency (we are governed by the right-wing party)

The woman says "Ridiculous..."

The old lady is not in her home. She is at work. She's meant to be what in Italian is called "la portinaia", aka a cross between a doorwoman and cleaner of a residential building. She's in her small "office" space, at the entrance of the building, from where she can survey the coming and goings of the inhabitants. It's a job that has mostly disappeared, but is culturally very clear to us as having the connotation of "potentially gossipy, one-million-percent judgmental woman who sees everything that goes on in the apartment complex, knows everyone and their secrets, and has Strong Opinions™️".

The case publicly disintegrated in 2021 when a judge vacated the conviction of Anthony Broadwater and Syracuse's district attorney said in court that the prosecution "should never have happened." Involving, as it did, a white woman accusing a poor Black man of rape, and coming back to court a year after the convulsions caused by the murder of George Floyd, the news detonated in the media, with Sebold vilified even after she apologized to Broadwater. The case was yet another reminder, if reminder was needed, of the racism in the U.S. justice system. And what had once been a central identity for Sebold — a person who had built a voice and a career out of standing up to sexual violence - suddenly turned on its head.

One detail lost in the frenzy raised the question of how many other victims had been left behind and what else the police might have missed: The district attorney said in court that there had been other rapes in the same park where Sebold had been attacked, including one a little over a week after Broadwater's conviction. The DA expressed frustration that "nobody might have put two and two together back then."