if i ever write something set in the united states im just going to do zero research whatsoever and make stuff up to sound cool it’s equality
the lush impenetrable jungles of massachusetts
oh! I have to tell you guys a great story one of my professors told me. So he has a friend who is involved in these Shakespeare outreach programs where they try to bring Shakespeare and live theatre to poor and underprivileged groups and teach them about English literature and performing arts and such. On one of their tours they stopped at a young offenders institute for women and they put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet for a group of 16-17 year old girls. It was all going really well and the girls were enjoying and laughing through the first half - because really, the first half is pretty much a comedy - but as the play went on, things started to get quiet. Real quiet. Then it got up to the suicide scene and mutterings broke out and all the girls were nudging each other and looking distressed, and as this teacher observed them, he realised - they didn’t know how the play ended. These girls had never been exposed to the story of Romeo and Juliet before, something which he thought was impossible given how ubiquitous it is in our culture. I mean, the prologue even gives the ending away, but of course it doesn’t specify exactly how the whole “take their life” thing goes down, so these poor girls had no idea what to expect and were sitting there clinging to hope that Romeo would maybe sit down for a damn minute instead of murdering Paris and chugging poison - but BAM he died and they all cried out - and then Juliet WOKE UP and they SCREAMED and by the end of the play they were so upset that a brawl nearly broke out, and that’s the story of how Shakespeare nearly started a riot at a juvenile detention centre
Apparently something similar happened during a production of Much Ado at Rikers Island because a bunch of inmates wanted to beat the shit out of Claudio, which is more than fair tbh
honestly Shakespeare would be so pleased to know his plays were nearly starting brawls centuries into the future
I played Claudio once and I fully support this
“When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side…there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.” And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period.”
Oskar Eustis
So what this paint company does is take iron pollution from abandoned mines that are polluting soils and rivers and makes iron based red pigment paints out of it.
Basically they realized hey no one's cleaning this shit up, it's polluting the streams, killing all the fish, making the water undrinkable and there's a huge market for it so why not make money by cleaning it the fuck up?
They remove this stuff by the industrial bucket load from the rivers. The idea is if it's in a painting, if it's in your home, it's not poisoning wildlife.
anyway its cool as shit, please support tf out of these people https://gamblinstore.com/reclaimed-earth-colors-set/
Oh
OH!!!
OhOhOHHhhhhhh!!!!!!!11!!eleven11!!!!!
The ✨
Fucking 😻
European Union's 🌈
Digital Service Act 🥲
Forces large social platforms 🥳
To always offer ♥️
a non-algorithmic option 🌟
To EU users 🤟
Fuck
Yeah
EU!!!!
[source]
I see US tech jounalists on Mastodon, once again, charging against the EU for "damaging european users" by forcing companies to deliver "a subpar experience". So let me paste something I wrote over there a few weeks ago:
------
I keep seeing very important US tech journalist here talking about how Threads not launching in the EU is:
- somehow shameful and a sign of how "you can't innovate in the EU"
- a problem for the EU, which will led us to creative interpretations of the GDPR to finally allow Meta to launch here.
And I think folks from the US tech scene really, really don't understand several things:
1) how incredibly hostile the EU (and a good chunk of the European political parties) are to "big tech".
2) how surprisingly immune to lobbying the EU Parliament appears to be.
3) how actually popular it's that the politicians take a hard stance against macrocorps. Every time the European Commission has gone against big tech most the press and the people have cheered them as our champions against evil.
And I can't even start describing how IMPORTANT for the future could be that people started being able to turn off YouTube algorithmic recommendations. I think YouTube shares with meta, pretty much 50/50, the responsibility for the global resurgence of fascism we have seen in the last decade.
The EU isn't perfect but I celebrate every time they get pissed at big tech firms for data and privacy breaches.
Or having 20000 different charger cables. 10/10 EU in this regard. Be hostile against algorithms targeting consumers.
Male Scifi and Fantasy writers: Look at this !Strong! female character! She can fight and solve puzzles, and ends up with the sidekick not the hero! Isn’t she a great character?
Everyone: No, she’s one-dimensional and still only exists to please the hero’s ego
Male scifi and fantasy writers: You’re never happy! This is how characters are written! Besides, it’s much harder for us to write women because we are men!
Terry Pratchett: *creates a female character who is literally the embodyment of a dog, sets her up to be the love interest of Protagonist Hero Man.* *writes her as clever, emotionally tortured, lonely and powerful* *uses her to explore difficulties of bisexuality and masculine dominated workforces*
Terry Pratchett: *Creates a pair of old witches, one of whom is a virgin and the other who has slept with lots of men.* *makes them best friends, never dismisses one lifestyle of the other, explains lifestyle choices based on characters history and personality, uses this to develop each character as the books progress*
Terry Pratchett: *Writes Sybil Rankin* *makes the powerful rich lady heavy set but beautiful, never plays her by her looks, develops her as she ages, acknowledges the way society views such people and then spits on their attitudes* *does it again with Agnes*
Terry Pratchett: *Writes a book about an entire army secretly being women, creates complex female relationships, introduces same sex relationships completely naturally*
Terry Pratchett: *takes old joke about female dwarves and uses it to explore gender identity without making it seem forced or unnatural, carefully discusses some of the issues and complextities whilst still making funny and witty observasions and maintaining genuine fantasy tropes*
Terry Pratchett: *DOES THIS ALL OVER AND OVER AGAIN, DEVELOPING CHARACTERS AS HIS VEIW OF THE WORLD DEVELOPS AND CAREFULLY APOLOGIZES FOR EARLY MISTAKES*
Excellent note by @spiderleggedhorse
