penny

Gilbert baker rainbow, huge intersex circle, the design is cluttered but in a good way 10/10

a friend of mine on bluesky is helping raise funds for her friend Eve, who is currently at significant risk of ending up on the streets due to excessive medical bills from emergencies and health issues.

shes only 18, has no supportive family, and is having to decide between going homeless or returning to dangerous (for her) survival sex work.

her gofundme is half funded right now!

please consider a donation - even one as small as $5 will help! - or, at the very least, a signal boost!

$729/$1300 (6/9/26)

(you can also boost on bluesky here)

okay this post was about daryl roth (produced liberation and suffs recently, as well as a like a hundred other ostensibly Progressive productions; husband is ceo of the realty firm that is the largest commercial landlord in new york city) but apparently is also true of christine schwarzman who accepted the best musical tony for schmigadoon the other night and is literally married to the ceo of fucking BLACKSTONE who is worth $50 billion and is obviously a longtime personal friend of trump, actively involved in his administration, and donated $40 million to republican candidates in the 2024 elections

but like. congrats to liberation and schmig for best play and best musical i guess! here's daryl roth (holding the award on the left) and christine schwarzman (giving the acceptance speech on the right). do you think they effectively utilized girl power and demonstrated The Power Of The Arts In Times Like These while their husbands were having dinner with their best friend donald and donating tens of millions of dollars to his projects. do you think they effectively utilized girl power when their billionaire husbands compared political calls to tax the rich to "racial slurs" (roth) and "hitler's invasion of poland in 1939" (schwarzman)

1984:

2000:

I’m p sure it’s not even intentional, but what a perfect illustration of whose point of view the movie makers automatically defaulted to. what a perfect distillation of an imperialist outside perspective that sees the planet as desolate, dangerous, a resource to be fought over and harvested.

and then the 2021 movie just straight up overhead kicks that shit into the trash can.

we are not seeing Arrakis from outer space, as an outside observer would.  we are not othered from it like we are in the other adaptions. we are right there, on its surface. and the movie opens with Chani narrating: “my home is beautiful.”

you’d think it’s just a small, insignificant change, but the difference in framing. the awareness. the fact that Arrakis gets introduced to us not as a dangerous material resource, but a beautiful home…! that shit is meaningful.

for so long this story about imperialism has been told by people who barely seemed to grasp the concept of structural critique at all. (I don’t think I have ever seen anyone miss the point as spectacularly as the guys who sat down and thought “Hey, let’s make a Dune RTS!”

“join one of three houses, whoever harvests the most Spice wins! :DDD” … just. incredible 🤣)

and I could go into more detail about how the other adaptions have a tendency to depict the Fremen as proud but primitive desert creatures and passive onlookers in their own subjugation, while the 2021 version makes it clear right off the bat that these are independent, capable human beings very well aware of their complex situation.