trying to get tumblr post embedding working properly, which is to say using the official API to get the semantic building blocks of each post instead of the dog vomit HTML they actually contain, and I've found myself shaving a yak. hopefully someone other than me will find this useful
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posted on www.eruditorumpress.com America a Prophecy 1: Exegesis
This structure does not inherently preclude a sincere or substantive engagement with 9/11–it’s entirely normal for comedy to use its final reveal for brutal effect—a stunned, awkward laugh that makes use of the shock of a perspective shift. But that’s not what’s going on here. The revelation that Snuffy has been talking about 9/11 does not provide any incisive commentary on what has gone before—it is simply a sudden intrusion of grief into a context that had done little to suggest such a thing was coming.
Is this supposed to be funny? Certainly it in practice is funny, in that the strip is a ridiculous absurd thing. But this is a humor of bathos—one in which we laugh at the strip instead of with it. Indeed, it is funny only to the precise degree that it isn’t supposed to be. If the strip is read as insincere, with its punchline meant to be funny then it becomes a cruel and ghoulish thing. What is funny about it is its misapplied sincerity—the fact that it genuinely appears to be engaging in an act of public mourning and is getting it wrong, instead ending up weirdly and dissonantly tone deaf.
When I wasn't in high school, one of the most compelling English class assignments I ever got was to find an ad from a newspaper or magazine and do a close critical reading of it to develop a deeper understanding of the cultural context in which that ad was created, what its specific goals were, and how it aimed to achieve them. It was a blast, and one of the most influential projects for me in developing my critical eye towards the world…
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posted so apparently you can't add a bookmark of a particular page to your home screen on Android if that page happens to be on a site that supports being a progressive web app. it'll just always take you to the site root
posted on app.commentbox.io The solution I use: turn on Airplane mode, then try to load the site. Firefox will, of course, be unable to load it, but you can still add a shortcut to the homescreen. Doing it this way means you block the PWA manifest that it's loading that takes away all the reasons you loaded it in a web win the first place.
If that doesn't work, you can also put a rule in uBlock to block it, clear all the caches/cookies, and try again. If you need that rule let me know I will grab it.
holy shit it worked
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in a kosher household you'll often keep around snacks that contain neither meat nor dairy so you can eat them whenever. it's just parve for the course
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posted on theoptics.bearblog.dev twin cities metro communion
y'know when you're in a train car with exactlyand you fixate on the hidden enormity and complexity of your temporary companion's life and you wonder how more than two entire human beings could ever possibly fit in a train carone other person
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so apparently you can't add a bookmark of a particular page to your home screen on Android if that page happens to be on a site that supports being a progressive web app. it'll just always take you to the site root
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on The Great American Baking Show:
Sean: I'm really worried about it poofing up a little bit too much when the jam-
Paul Hollywood: Poofing up?
Ellie: Poofing up!
Sean: The correct term. The scientific term.
Ellie: The culinary term. Yeah. "Poof up."
Sean: Yeah, you know, poof it!
Paul Hollywood: Like puffing up?
Sean: Yeah, yeah, but "poof" just has a little bit of, like, *gestures expansively* poof!
Ellie: Poof!
Sean: Puff just sounds a little...
Ellie, dismissively: Puff.
Paul Hollywood: 💭 Am I the only person at this table who realizes this is a slur for gay people?
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Máxima asked: Are you going to play Silent Hill 2 OG or Remake this halloween?
As good as the remake looks, it's made by an entirely different team
Good question! For those unfamiliar, I've had a yearly tradition since 2021 of playing a classic survival horror game each October, because I like themes. I've played Resident Evil (GameCube version), Silent Hill (PlayStation version which I think is the only one), and Resident Evil 2 (2019 remake) so far. This year, as Máxima accurately recalls, I am planning to play Silent Hill 2.
Originally I thought I would obviously be playing the original, since the remake was being made by Bloober Team whose horror output has not seemed particularly great. But with this remake reviewing quite well, I did take some time to consider it as a real possibility. Ultimately, particularly after consulting Christa who has strong opinions about these sorts of things, I decided to stick with the original.
Where I've found my interest in Resident Evil as a series largely orbiting its mechanics and the use of game design to convey a notion of "horror", at least in the first Silent Hill much more of what I found compelling was wrapped up in the story and atmosphere. That's much harder to preserve, let alone elaborate on, in a remake. Even a really good remake made in 2024 will still have 2024-era textures and mocap and movement. If I'm playing a game for its vibe, I think I want the first time I play it to be with the original vibe.
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This is deceptively compelling. At first glance, the ape men, broken english, and doctrine that all animals converge on the perfect (evidently white) human form feels teleological with a distinct flavor of eugenics. But as the film progresses, it builds out a much more nuanced narrative. "Are we not men?" cry the islanders, taught this mantra by Moreau himself. But Moreau does not truly want them to see themselves as fully human. To him they are at their most compelling, and their most useful, as a sub-human who will do his bidding without ever being his equal.
Although Moreau's work isn't precisely secret, he is coy about it, and when he speaks to the mainland about the other inhabitants of his island he refers to them as "the natives". This gives away the allegory: Moreau is a colonizer and the beast-men his colonized subjects. Whatever he has given them has come with a terrible price: not just subservience but subhumanity. When Bela Lugosi's striking Speaker of the Law accuses Moreau of making them "not men but things", I hear it not as a tired admonishment to avoid meddling in the natural order, but as a claim that it is Moreau himself—despite his vaunted laws—who prevented them from becoming fully human.
It's telling that where H. G. Wells's novel is structured around the tendency of beast-men to revert to their bestial instinct, the film pushes this thread far into the background. The climax of the plot is no longer driven by instinctual violence, but by words: the Speaker of the Law confronts Moreau and declares his laws void because they are built on lies and hypocrisy. In their way, the beast-men are more rational than Moreau himself. The film ends by challenging the core dichotomy between "beast" and "man" at its root and suggesting (surprisingly deftly for a film made within Wells's lifetime) that the concept of "sub-humanity" is itself inhuman.
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posted on shelraphen.com Kol Tzedek Synagogue and Masks: A Call for Accountability
This was the last community space where I felt fully included. This was the last community space where I could meet a new person by chance, and not have my mask be a social barrier. In other community spaces, people do not try to socialize with me. Unmasked people avoid me so long as I am wearing a mask. I have conducted experiments. During times of low-transmission, I have experimented with taking my mask off in community events where people previously had ignored me despite my generally outgoing personality. Suddenly, everyone becomes very interested in talking to me. People welcome me to the space as if I am new. I tell people that we had actually met before—multiple times, in this same space. They ask where I had been this whole time. I tell them, right here, the whole time, wearing a mask. At the next event, I will put my mask back on, and those same people will go back to ignoring me when I greet them by name. Kol Tzedek was the only space where this was not an issue, because everyone was wearing a mask.
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I wish we could have negotiated. I wish we could have agreed to compromises. I wish it was not just a venting session where fifty disabled people cried in our own ways and a middle-aged cis woman took notes with a blank facial expression. I remember at one point, she asked me why I do not simply attend virtual services. I am grateful for the existence of virtual services in this world, but to suggest that they are comparable to an in-person community space is a joke. If virtual services were just as good as in-person services,…
