Nonsensical Babblings

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

OP also invented armsocks.

But wait, there’s more!

Let's just be real for a second.

At the end of the day, Captain America: Brave New World was a movie about a Black man (Sam Wilson) who risked his reputation, his status and his life, to protect another Black man (Isaiah Bradley)

...like, I feel like more people need to be aware of that.

"You're a Lord of the Rings extra now."

"No! Please! I have a family! I'm supposed to work the closing shift at the Pita Pit tonight!"

Most hoard images from Wikipedia.

Found with the rest of the hoard, the handaxe pictured above was probably found either while digging his own hole for the treasure or maybe earlier in a precious bout of hoarding by some Romano-Briton who thought it was cool enough to bury along with all of his coins and Juliane's bracelet, because cool rock. This was absolutely the correct move.

Ask yourself, how does this piece make you feel? (No wrong answers)

Look for an artist statement nearby. What does it say about the artist and their relationship to their work? What does the artist say that they are trying to convey with their art? What contextual clues can you pick up from what they say about their background, or what they omit?

Look at the title of the piece. What is the artist saying about their work by naming it that, either explicitly or implicitly?

Look at the medium. Is there anything about the piece that stands out to you, knowing what it's made of?

Look at the year it was made. What cultural events might have been happening around this time? Was this piece part of a particular art movement? What was the purpose of that art movement, and what was it trying to say?

That's it. That's my answer. Endor.

The heat’s been brutal this summer but we still gotta eat! If you’re like me, heat might suppress your appetite, and the last thing any of us want is to sweat over a hot stove and oven when it’s already boiling outside. Here are some of my favorite hot-weather recipes to keep hydrated and fed with when the weather is unbearable! (All recipes should be un-paywalled).

NYT’s best gazpacho (lives up to its name!!)

Persian cold cucumber soup (if you like tzatziki you will like this!)

Eric Kim’s cold noodles with tomato (infinitely riffable Korean flavor profile — for a creamier and less brothy take, try these cold sesame noodles too)

Vietnamese chicken and herb salad (this is an excellent time to get a rotisserie chicken so you don’t have to turn the oven on)

Radish sandwiches with butter and salt (and in a similar vein, if you dig this flavor combo you should try this Polish cottage cheese dip on some good rye bread or even crackers)

It’s still a little early in the season, but you can never go wrong with a BLT (or, if you don’t eat bacon, try this tomato furikake sandwich in its place)

Infinite iterations of pasta salad! You can use anything you got but here is a template I like.

Assorted dense bean salads. This back pocket canned salad is a weird combo of jarred ingredients but it slaps, this hoagie-inspired one is super satisfying, and cowboy caviar is a classic for a reason.

Poke bowls! Canned tuna mixed with some kewpie mayo and sriracha is a budget-friendly riff on the usual ahi and makes everything taste like a spicy tuna roll, but use whatever proteins you like, this is more of a loose template.

Infants are given a vitamin k shot at birth because they cannot synthesize vitamin k or get it from their diets, it is vital in preventing vitamin deficient bleeding which can cause death or permanent brain damage. Administering the injection is a bog standard preventative measure done on newborns immediately after birth, usually automatically. More and more parents are denying it and more and more babies are having totally preventable complications in their first 6 months of life just because the vitamin k shot has a black box warning. Doctors are repeatedly trying to explain to parents that babies need vitamin k and parents just keep asking “Why? Why are babies born needing vitamin k? Humans survived for thousands of years before it was invented. This must be a conspiracy.”

Infants, the human life stage notorious for randomly dying with no easily discernible cause. I don’t say that to be flippant, human babies are so incredibly fragile that before the modern era, about half of them died before adulthood. That is a natural 50/50 of making it. Humans did not evolve to be perfectly designed and efficient, we are just functional enough for some of us to survive to adulthood and reproduce. We don’t have to live like that! Looking at the human body through the lens of infallible intelligent design and allowing that to inform your medical decisions is so fucking dangerous.

The "problem" is that in the last hundred years or so our medical advancement has been meteoric. So people (in rich countries) forget, how easy it is for a child to die. We have built incredible scientific infrastructure to make sure that kids don't die of diseases like polio. But over time those advancements fade into the background. They become routine.

We are just far enough removed from diseases like polio, that people don't remember how devastating they were. You're not afraid of your kid dying of polio because you don't know any kids who have died of polio.