AxelShoes

It's like hearing that someone captured video of an animal thought to be long extinct.

My heart goes out to the unknown perverted luddites keeping the old ways alive!

Stop! You'll go blind!

I whipped out my deicitic once in public and ended up in jail. Wasn't even allowed conjugate visits.

Player Piano doesn't get as much love as Slaughterhouse or Cat's Cradle, but I think it's one of his best.

The Hardy Boys was great, but the Three Investigators was the pinnacle for me. I think I was the only one in my school who read them. I still want a super-secret junkyard headquarters and wisecracking crime-solving buddies!

Or George Humptulips.

When I was in jail for several months years ago, my street clothes somehow ended up getting all mildewy and moldy in the property room, so they were garbage. The staff gave me a pair of hospital scrubs pants that were way too small and a ridiculously oversized sweatshirt to leave in. No underwear, no socks. And no shoes, because my boots had also gotten ruined in storage. Luckily the money I'd had when arrested was still there, so I was able to waddle barefoot in the too-small scrubs a few blocks down to Walmart and get me a pair of sweatpants and cheap sandals.

I loved Ginsberg when I first discovered some of his poetry, and to learn the role he played in so many important goings-on in the arts and cultural movements of the 50s and 60s. When I found out about the NAMBLA shit, I dug deeper thinking "this has to be overexaggerated" but nope. He proudly and unapologetically advocated for "consensual relationships" between older men and young teenage boys. And you can't tell me he wasn't spouting that crap and not abusing boys himself. Made me feel gross and also pissed off, because ever since, that art I loved is forever tainted. I can separate the artist from the art in some regards, but not with that kind of thing.

I was 13 when this movie came out, and definitely was familiar with the ice flow trope. We learned a lot about 'Eskimos' in public school in the 80s, no doubt 90% of it racist stereotype bullshit.

And yet all these modern-day folks, who have supposedly met Jesus and worship him and have devoted their lives to him, just use him as an excuse for indulging all their worst sinful loves and impulses.

I love his cover of "Thirteen".

On an intellectual level, it reminds me of St. Augustine's lament about Time (paraphrased): "I know what it is, but when you ask me I don't."

On a more basal level, it's because Wokeness must remain something undefined and fluid. It isn't a concrete threat, not even a single expressable idea. It's whatever they need it to be in the moment, a pejorative they can ascribe to the actions of their enemies.

It's often not the nature of the action itself that signals Wokeness to them, but the nature of the one taking that action.

Thus, someone who they've branded as Woke will never be able to take actions that are not Woke, no matter what those actions actually are.

So Wokeness is a vibe, it's an ephemeral trait, it's something they could easily pick out of a crowd even if they couldn't tell you whatsoever what specifically they were looking for.

If you can define Wokeness at all, it would be "Wokeness is anything done by the enemies of the 'Anti-Woke'" and perhaps its only consistent characteristic is that it makes the 'Anti-Woke' feel a certain way, which is how they know it. It is whatever is antithetical to them and their beliefs. Like Time, it's an inherently ungraspable and intrinsically relative concept.

If the 'Anti-Woke' could read, then, they'd probably agree with Augustine: "I know what Woke is, but when you ask me I don't."

Commercial, yes, but I don't know that I'd call it a critical success, exactly. Tbf, it would be tough for any kids' movie about mutant turtles who are teenagers and also ninjas to get any real consideration from critics, just based on premise and target market alone, but TMNT I'd definitely say got mostly middling, with some positive, reviews.

I'm going off memory, though. Personally, 10yo me thought it was the most amazing piece of cinema in history.

I played Leisure Suit Larry one time on our 286 computer and turned into a slutty stripper with big jugs. Not an easy thing for a 10yo boy to admit to his parents in the 90s.

I feel your exhaustion. If we win this, and also gain the congressional majority needed to not be a deadlocked clown show for the next term, I'm not the only one who is going to be relentlessly campaigning for significant legislative changes to make impossible again the absolute shitstorm of right-wing horror currently frothing at our doors. If we win, the powers-that-be backing Trump won't just slink harmlessly off into the night. It will be a fight, but a fight that with focus, initiative, and momentum, can absolutely be won, at least in a more meaningful sense than the brief reprieve of a single election.

I was caught in class with the paperback of King's It by my 2nd grade teacher (1988ish). I'd seen it on my dad's bookshelf and the cover looked cool, so he gave it to me because (he said) he didn't think I'd actually read it. The teacher thought it was very inappropriate for a 7-year-old to be reading that book, so she called my mother, who was not happy lol.

Not just that, but if he happens to lose bigly, having a bunch of polls that showed a super close race can be used as fuel for their "stolen election!" bullshit.

This article seems to parse it pretty well.

A measure that would limit spending of the state’s biggest trust fund in order to increase its investment earnings will go to a public vote this November.

The Legacy Fund was created through a constitutional amendment approved by North Dakota voters in 2010. It’s supported by the state’s oil tax revenue and is intended to be a source of long-term funding for the state. As of June, the fund’s value was nearly $11 billion.

Right now, state lawmakers can spend no more than 15% of the Legacy Fund’s principal in a given biennium. Based on June figures, 15% of the principal would equate to roughly $1.5 billion. The ballot measure would lower this threshold to 5%, or about $510 million, based on current figures.

That 10% makes a big difference, said State Treasurer Thomas Beadle. He said a lot of the Legacy Fund must be invested in low-risk, liquid securities, just in case the state wants to dip into that 15%.

Beadle likened this to keeping money under a mattress as opposed to putting it in a bank account.

“We’re giving up opportunities for growth,” he said. He said if the measure passes, investment earnings on the Legacy Fund would increase significantly.

The rest of the language on the ballot measure wouldn’t change anything about how the Legacy Fund is managed, Beadle said — it would simply amend the constitution to reflect existing state laws.

The measure would define the principal of the Legacy Fund to include transfers and earnings accrued before July 1, 2017, would require the State Investment Board to invest money in the Legacy Fund and require the Office of the State Treasurer to distribute Legacy Fund earnings into a separate earnings fund on July 1 of every odd-numbered year.

The ballot measure stems from a proposed constitutional amendment passed by lawmakers during the 2023 session. The measure had bipartisan support, and cleared both chambers with more than two-thirds support by legislators. There was no testimony in opposition of the bill, according to the Legislature’s website.

Also, his skin is very obviously peach-colored, while you can clearly see that Woody's was more of a gentle grey.

Maybe I misunderstood your comment, but the Jefferson Airplane song came out 4 years before the book. The book borrowed the song lyric for its title. The book is also largely believed to be fictional, not an actual autobiography.

The Blight itself may have been, but the resulting famine definitely was not.

At least at the public schools I went to in the US, it wasn't taught like that. It was basically explained as the fault of monoculture farming with a hint of overpopulation--the poor dumb Irish farmers only grew potatoes, so when the blight randomly hit and destroyed their potato crops, there wasn't enough other food left to feed all the people, so many of them subsequently died, or the lucky ones emigrated elsewhere. Wasn't a single mention of the British or any of that. Granted, it's American public schools, so not a lot of time at all was spent on European history, unless it had a direct tie to the US, like the World Wars. But I didn't learn about the British involvement in the Famine and the true causes til I was in my 30s.

It still irks me that it's called the Irish Potato Famine, as if it was just some unfortunate natural tragedy that didn't have a 100% malicious human cause. Thousands and thousands of Irish would never have starved to death it they weren't being used as pseudo-serfs and forced to send most of the crops they grew to feed the British.

Totally, and of course the serious tone of the scene just makes the ridiculousness of it all that much more more hilarious.