afriendlyirin

[afriendlyirin]

do you ever hear people talking about something and you’re like. fuck. let me be real for a second. i’m too much of a commie to have this conversation

#politics #capitalism #feminism

[afriendlyirin]

NEW YORK CITY - It's a bird, it's a plane, it's not Superman, but it's the next best thing. The world was shocked this week when the first individual with superpowers began fighting crime, first by interrupting a police chase in Manhattan, and soon by declaring: the world is now safe.

He may not fly, but The Vortex is able to travel across the world with his ability to make teleportation portals. According to our exclusive interview, he discovered his abilities and vowed to fight crime last week, and after a week spent modifying several worn Korn t-shirts into his all-black superhero suit, he was ready.

It was quite a shocking sight for live TV viewers. Bam! Pow! The Vortex ended the chase by bursting from a portal inside the criminal's stomach, causing the bad guys to instantaneously burst apart into villainous goop. But when everyone realized this was no murderer, but a hero, the scene calmed down, as the responding police asked for The Vortex's autograph.

"I'm the hero," The Vortex told us exclusively. "I knew I couldn't do a bad thing because bad guys do bad things, and I'm the hero."

"So you're still working out the kinks in your powers?" Our reporter asked with a laugh.

"What?"

Children are loving this Marvel comic come to life; when a family of seven were held hostage by their uncle, the Vortex saved the day by materializing inside the uncle's bloodstream and gradually expanding, causing the uncle to distend in a manner befitting bad guys and then explode. When the youngest girl was interviewed, after throwing up from the trauma of being held hostage by her own uncle, there was a endearing little gaffe as she said "I don't know, now I think maybe it would have been good if my uncle had shot me, before -" she vomited once more; her confusion over who's the good and the bad guy can be attributed to her evil-adjacency-induced malaise.

But all is not so clean and beautiful. In Cleveland, when a deranged gunman tried to assassinate the assistant executive assistant to the mayor, the Vortex responded - but the gunman unfortunately used some unknown form of "counter-power" to relocate the portal into the executive assistant assistant's midsection, causing his separated but still conscious upper half to fall through the sky and back onto his legs. Unfortunately, he died despite this. The Vortex was quoted as saying, "it's very sad. I wanted to do that trick but I hoped they would be put back together. The evil man made it so we couldn't put them back together. But I'll do it. I'll put them back together next time."

Spoken like a true hero! We can rest easy knowing that he can appear anywhere, anytime, inside anyone, but only if they're a bad guy who's evil.

#stories #politics #superheroes

[afriendlyirin]

TIL In an epilogue at the end of the original 1931 Dracula film, Dracula breaks the fourth wall and taunts the audience, saying vampires are real and to be afraid. In a 1936 re-release, this was censored by the Hays Code, out of fear it would encourage belief in the occult.

via reddit.com

#dracula #media #funny

[afriendlyirin]

I rly hate the Satanic Panic & the moral panic surrounding violence in video games in the 90s, coz it's now impossible to talk about the social implications of violent video games in a realistic sense.

No, violence in video games does not create serial killers in the way most people imagine it would.

However, it's very important to notice how after 9/11, a lot of violent video games pivoted their content from silly gratuitous cartoon gore to more realistic military shooters set in the Levant from a US American lens. It's also important to notice the connection of these games & their toxic online multi-player voice chats to Gamer Gate in 2014.

It's obviously not as black & white as it was presented in the 80s & 90s, I dont think everyone who played early Call of Duty games is a white supremacist who wants to join the military to kill people in the middle east, but I think it's dangerous to pretend like video games or any media can't have an impact on the way people think about violence.

I think what makes all the difference here is how that violence is portrayed, what the message behind it is, what the motives are behind the people who crafted that message, who the victims of that violence are, how they are portrayed & the greater cultural context that surrounds it.

#politics #media

[afriendlyirin]

It really does baffle me why Biden is just letting this happen. I would have thought that surely even the most cynical of politicians cares about protecting their own power, if nothing else, but no, apparently they are perfectly willing to roll over and let their opponents destroy them.

This is why we need direct democracy instead of just hoping our leaders will be willing to act in their own best interest when it happens to coincide with our best interests.

#politics #donald trump #fascism

[afriendlyirin]

FWIW, "mauve" was one of the coal-tar dyes developed in the mid-19th century that made eye-wateringly bright clothing fashionable for a few decades.

It was an eye-popping magenta purple

HOWEVER, like most aniline dyes, it faded badly, to a washed-out blue-grey ...

...which was the color ignorant youngsters in the 1920s associated with “mauve”.

(This dress is labeled "mauve" as it is the color the above becomes after fading).

They colored their vision of the past with washed-out pastels that were NOTHING like the eye-popping electric shades the mid-Victorians loved. This 1926 fashion history book by Paul di Giafferi paints a hugely distorted, I would say dishonest picture of the past.

Ever since then this faded bluish lavender and not the original electric eye-watering hot pink-purple is the color associated with the word “mauve”.

#history #interesting

[afriendlyirin]

anti-ai people need to understand that the opposition communists have to luddism and reactionary sentiment isn't like, a moral one. the main problem with luddism is that it doesn't actually work. like when we say 'we mustn't try to fight against technology itself, we need to fight against the social system that makes it so that advancement in technology and labour-saving devices lead to layoffs' the reason we're saying it is because, if you try fighting the technology, you're going to lose, and you're still going to lose your job too. when you say 'yeah i understand your criticism but I'm still going to fight against AI' you very clearly did not understand the criticism, because the point is that it isn't even in your own self-interest, because it will not work. the fact that, even if it did work, it would only mean maintaining a privileged strata of 'skilled labour' above other workers is secondary -- because, again, flatly resisting technological advancement has never worked in history.

#politics #capitalism #generative ai

[afriendlyirin]

YOU KNOW JUST GETTING THE KID UP TO SPEED AND ALL THAT / IT ACTUALLY GETS PRETTY CONFUSING UP HERE WHEN PEOPLE USE HIS NAME AS A GENERIC RHETORICAL INTENSIFIER SO IF YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS ON THAT HONESTLY WE’RE ALL PRETTY OPEN TO IT

#dinosaur comics #comics #funny

[afriendlyirin]

When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

#autism #funny

[afriendlyirin]

As a young boy in school, Masaki Sashima would be dragged out of his classroom and beaten by his fellow students.

Masaki, now 72, was different to the other kids. 

He was Ainu, an Indigenous people from the country's northern regions, most notably the large island of Hokkaido.

"During recess, the hallway door would open, and several guys would yell at me to come out," he said.

"I clung to my desk in the classroom and kept quiet.

"Everyone would surround me and beat me."

Japan has long portrayed itself as culturally and ethnically homogenous, something that some have even argued is a key to its success as a nation.

More than 98 per cent of Japanese people are descendants of the Yamato people. 

But the Ainu are distinct, with their own history, languages, and culture.

But, as the victims of colonialism, assimilation, and discrimination, much of that identity has been lost. 

#politics #history #racism

[afriendlyirin]

Pointing out that the Rapture as a concept is a little less than two hundred years old - it's originally from the 1833 - that really buries the lede on how recent it is. Bc the modern evangelical take on the Rapture is from a book published in 1970. That predicted the Rapture would happen no later than 1988.

#politics #religion #christianity #left behind

[afriendlyirin]

It's easy to be shocked that the majority of Americans supported the National Guard after Kent State, but that's because everyone who was a student protestor proudly mentions it, and nobody ever boasts about telling a survey-taker yeah, I thought those kids had it coming.

#politics #history

[afriendlyirin]

Too many fandom debates now revolve solely around "is it canon" and leave behind the far more important question, "is it terrible"

#media #fandom

[afriendlyirin]

ok anyways. post this beast

#animals #martens #cute

[afriendlyirin]

The flip side of the post-World War II cries of “Never again” was an unspoken “Never before.” The insistence on lifting the Holocaust out of history, the failure to recognize these patterns, and the refusal to see where the Nazis fit inside the arc of colonial genocides have all come at a high cost. The countries that defeated Hitler did not have to confront the uncomfortable fact that Hitler had taken pointers and inspiration on race-making and on human containment from them, leaving their innocence not only undisturbed but also significantly strengthened by what was indeed a righteous victory.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger

#politics #history #racism

[afriendlyirin]

The anarchist adventurism surrounding the student protests is starting to get more than a little obnoxious

#politics #nuance #useful

[afriendlyirin]

kui is literally so brilliant at well-thought-out anatomy and character design I could just study it all day

#dungeon meshi #art