i saw some comments on tiktok where people were talking bout how they found tumblr too hard to use and part of it being that there was no lack of dates so “what if you reblog or like something from five years ago?!”
buddy… we have posts circulating still from 2011, its literally just how it is
I love this, though, because my favorite thing about Superman is he isn’t Batman. I love Batman too, but Superman isn’t a dude who decided to live his life in pursuit of a vendetta against society when he was eight and then just did nothing for the next two decades but get super jacked, become the world’s greatest detective, and memorize every strategy used by every winner in every field of competition in history. Superman is a very good-hearted person who knows how to bale hay, use AP Stylebook, and break meteors into manageable bite-sized pieces by hitting them real hard. And I’m not saying Superman isn’t smart. He’s a bright guy, he’s just not like, one of the celebrated geniuses of the DC Universe. The best thing about Superman is he is basically a normal dude who happens to be orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else. Normal dudes have brain farts. Normal dudes are presented with a life-or-death situation they have less than four seconds to resolve and make a decision that is not optimal. Normal dudes aren’t typically asked to rescue a child from a 10,000 ton machine bearing down on him at 85mph, but if they were, they would probably sometimes panic a little and do dumb shit like ruin a train when they could have just whisked the child to safety.
I think sometimes Superman makes the wrong decision, not necessarily to the result of extreme catastrophe, but something like this, where everyone is standing around clapping and cheering and the kid’s parents are weeping in gratitude and they want to pose for a picture for the 6 o’ clock news with Superman and the conductor, and in the crowd someone is like “Why didn’t he fly the kid out of the way?” and rather than rolling with the fact that the emperor is naked his friend just says “Shut up, Drew, it’s Superman.”
And then, because I also love Batman for very different reasons, I imagine that later on the same day Bruce Wayne gets a phone call and Clark Kent is like “Hey, Wayne, I uh, need a favor.”
“Do you now.”
“Yeah, I, uh, kind of owe the Union Pacific Railroad $60,000.”
“Oh, and why’s that?”
“Come on, don’t do this to me. It was all over the news.”
“I’m prepared to write you a no-strings-attached check for the full amount on the condition that you explain your entire thought process from beginning to end.”
It’s wonderful how, with no warning and without even trying, we will randomly stumble across new favorite songs, new favorite artists, new favorite books, new favorite movies, new favorite games, new favorite shows, new favorite snacks, new passions, new hobbies, new interests, new favorite blogs and new favorite people. So when things are terrible, hold onto the fact that someday, possibly when you least expect it, you’ll suddenly come across something wonderful!
I want Mai to be confirmed as Fire Lady. I want to see the wedding. I want Mai to complain about how the “traditional” hair for Fire Nation weddings is weird. I want Zuko to call Mai “my lady” relentlessly and Mai rolling her eyes. I want Mai to bag on entire affair while secretly enjoying it. I want Mai to tell Zuko that she’s going to kill him with her stilettoes if he calls her “my lady” one more time. I want Zuko to laugh. I want Sokka to see/hear that laugh and do a double take. I want the rest of the gaang to tell Sokka he was imagining things. I want Katara to ask Mai about how it feels to be married. I want Mai to say “you mean a normal marriage, or being married to that turtle-duck.” I want Mai and Zuko to be cute and happy. And I want it now.
also with all due respect the main reason the left loses so much is that y’all refuse to compromise on the language and messaging you use to speak to voters. i swear if you rebranded “defund the police” as “invest in community safety from the ground up” most white suburban moderates would be like “that sounds great” and i know that because that’s how i’ve literally reframed it to white suburban moderates who think “defund the police” means we’re going to live in a scary lawless mad max world
like maybe it comes across as mealy-mouthed and corny to people steeped in online cynicism but just to be clear, this is the country that wouldn’t eat french fries after 9/11 so we renamed them “freedom fries” and everyone was suddenly cool again. americans are not, by and large, super sophisticated about this stuff
okay, so, as a followup…. basically, i joined this “christians against trump” fb group for a work research project in 2017 and just ended up never leaving, bc it turned out to be such a great experiment in just… observing and listening and talking to people and figuring out the language that works! so like, as a basic glossary for talking to the well-meaning anti-trump moderate dems in your life about progressive policies:
instead of “defund the police,” say “invest in community safety” and emphasize things like participatory budgeting giving you power over where YOUR taxes go and reallocating funds to after-school programs, social services, and food pantries
instead of “abolish ice,” say “immigration reform” and “create a new agency for immigration and citizenship services”
instead of “medicare for all,” say “universal health care” or even just really harp on making healthcare affordable and accessible to everyone
instead of “the green new deal” (which was a great piece of messaging in the first place before it became inextricably tied up with aoc’s theatrics), talk about what an effective piece of climate legislation will create, not what it will destroy. when you say “ban fracking” or “ban fossil fuels” or “reduce methane emissions in agriculture” people go “YOU WON’T TAKE MY JOB OR MY FARTING COWS.” climate is really an area where being able to reframe it through the language of capitalism helps. say “let’s give tax breaks to farmers, especially small family farms who are already being squeezed out by the big guys, so they can invest in the future of their business” and other noise-shaped air stuff like that. instead of “ban fracking” talk about the jobs that renewable energy will create in communities that have been left behind by our reliance on foreign oil. i mean, fuck, the phrase “climate change” can be a real problem when you’re talking to the whole country because of how effective the “climate and weather are the same things” and “climate change is a hoax” disinfo campaigns have been over the past 20 years or so - but when you talk about “conserving our natural resources” and all that teddy roosevelt, ranger rick shit, it just comes across different.
instead of “abortion rights”…. listen, you know i hate equivocating about abortion but at the end of the day, when you’re talking to people who are probably anti-abortion for religious reasons but will still vote democrat because they’re not a single-issue anti-abortion voter, don’t say “abortion (on demand without apology etc),” say “the constitutional right to privacy” or “the right to make personal medical decisions without the government intervening.” fearmonger about attacks on abortion the way sarah palin fearmongered about how obamacare would lead to “death panels” deciding whether your grandma would live or die! and if you’re talking to someone who just doesn’t feel that strongly about abortion because yada yada roe is settled who cares, talk about how “empowering women to decide when they start a family fuels economic growth and leads to more wanted children growing up in stable, happy two-parent homes” and so on.
inversely, instead of “abolish the death penalty,” talk about “saving the lives of the innocent” and “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” if you’re talking to a christian and honestly just look at the libertarian arguments against the death penalty and ape some of those - cost to the taxpayer, high wrongful conviction rates as a reflection of government incompetence. honestly, the libertarian right is frequently aligned with the left on criminal justice issues and i know we all love to dunk on libertarians but the language they use is pretty appealing to moderates who might be coming from a more conservative background or region where it’s just normal
instead of “democratic socialism,” just talk about, like, values - ending poverty and hunger, living wages and better educational opportunities, creating jobs and protecting ordinary working people and families and putting money back in their pockets and creating a stable economy. people really do vote based on kitchen table issues and you can really make a moral appeal on the rest.
instead of “tax the rich,” say “cut taxes.” period. never talk about raising taxes. not on the rich, not on the middle class, not for any reason whatsoever, even if you’re saying “if we raise taxes on billionaires we can give everyone a pony.” i don’t care how much you want to tax billionaires, don’t fucking bring it up. i hate bezos as much as everyone but we live in america, where everyone is simply a temporarily embarrassed billionaire and convinced that taxing the ultra-rich will somehow hurt them too. don’t expect middle-of-the-road normies to get on board with the “i’ll pay more taxes if it means other people have health care” thing you see from avowed liberals and lefties, because they will not, i’m sorry. frankly *****i***** have no interest in paying more taxes because nyc already taxes you out the nose regardless of where you are on the socioeconomic scale and if someone suggested i should pay more, even if it meant paying less on private services in the long run, i would simply be like, “nope!” so like, yeah, obviously the goal is to eliminate corporate tax loopholes and tax the ultra-rich at a higher rate while cutting tax burdens on everyone else, but what you want to say is stuff like “small business owners shouldn’t pay more in taxes than the companies like apple and amazon that are already squeezing them out” and “we’ll cut taxes and frivolous government spending,” period, no embellishment. “making american companies pay american taxes” is a succinct catchphrase i like to use.
instead of “defund/spend less on the military,” say “why is the government spending so much on building outdated outdated tanks and submarines from 50 years ago and so little on services for veterans? we need to revitalize our military spending so that we can spend less on safer, more modern equipment, preserve those manufacturing jobs, and make sure that veterans get the health care and job opportunities they deserve.” get it? like, republicans have been selling the “cut waste, cut taxes, cut spending” line for decades because it sounds good and people really respond to it. unfortunately, one of the many cursed legacies of ronald reagan is that most people still think that balancing a government budget is like balancing a checkbook, and obviously that’s not true but it lends a lot of familiar comparisons and metaphors, so like… use them.
don’t equivocate on “black lives matter” - it’s too important and too urgent - instead, give the non-activist liberals you already know the accessible language they can use to help normalize the phrase “black lives matter” in their own lives and encourage them to do so. they won’t convert the full-on blue lives matter cult members and other assorted balls-to-the-wall racists, but there are people in the middle who just need to hear a targeted explanation of why that isn’t a combative or controversial statement, and that totally depends on the individual… there’s the very basic 101-logicky “if saying ‘save the whales’ doesn’t mean you think dolphins can kick rocks, or if saying ‘spinach is a vegetable’ doesn’t mean that you think lettuce isn’t, why does ‘black lives matter’ imply that other lives don’t?” and i saw someone in the christians against trump group cite a brene brown quote they said (“In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were simply a member of a culture that at one time normalized that behavior, it shaped us. We can’t undo that level of dehumanizing in one or two generations. I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery.”) that made it click for them and they like to use to make it click for others, and there’s also this example that i think is probably pretty resonant for christians:
the point is, as with all the rest of this, that there are a lot of people out there who are alienated by the language (because there has been a billion-dollar media propaganda machine working overtime to make the language as alienating as possible) but not by the content of the argument. the right is SO good at messaging to its base by speaking their language, dog whistles and all. but because the democratic party is a coalition of moderates and liberals and leftists, you really have to be strategic about your messaging in a way that the right doesn’t. frankly, that’s why joe biden won - he made those same broad appeals to morality and civility and unity and prosperity that people want to hear.
i realize that everyone feels that if you have the moral high ground, you shouldn’t have to put in work to persuade people because they should automatically grasp that you’re right, but like i said above, this is america, and it doesn’t work like that. we need to talk to people, not in buzzwords or in highly stigmatized language that risks turning them off immediately, but in language that already means something to them. if you want to persuade people you have to actually make things sound appealing to them, whether that means evoking warm and fuzzy mental images or appealing to their principles and moral convictions and religious beliefs or just doing your best to sound like the adults in the room. you gotta do this stuff to build a majority instead of just a plurality within this party, because that’s just what we need to win.
imma say it. “kung fu panda” did more for body positivity and saying that you can be fat and still be healthy and liked than ANYTHING any beauty companies trying to get your money.
kfp also respects women more than any beauty company too.
also it had a positive relationship between an adopted child and his stepfather even after he found out he was adopted
Hey yknow how Viper was born without fangs, but instead of being rendered helpless as her family thought she’d be, she instead used her other skills to become the best warrior in her clan?
And how Tigress had severe, destructive anger issues when she was younger, but instead of being painted as a “problem child” she was instead taught her how to channel her emotions into something constructive?
And how Crane trained extra hard to impress a girl, and was by all rights the hero of his own story, but he still didn’t get her in the end? And how the girl isn’t shamed for it?
It’s almost as if you get more mileage out of treating your characters (and the people they resemble) with compassion than you do just shamelessly stamping them with your own misconceptions and hang ups.
I’m honestly kind of shocked how well-written this cartoon about Jack Black as a panda ended up being, but kudos to KFP!
the space race may be the funniest point in history period and i’ll stand by that. the US is like “yes whoever gets into space first will prove once and for all that our economic model is superior and that we are, in general, the superior country of superior and smarter people.” then the soviets just went and did it and the US freaked out and needed to cover their ass so were like “WE MEAN THE MOON, WE MEAN THE FIRST TO LAND ON THE MOON.”
yeah its cus walking on the moon was cool as hell and all this other boring shit sucked ass
When I was a freshman in a red-state college, I had a professor who taught Newtonian physics with a super thick Russian accent. The student body was unusually conservative for a state college, so there was a sort of general bemusement about learning physics from a Russian, but even back then the Cold War was far enough in the past that not even the red tribe was inclined to stir up trouble about it.
He was aware enough of this to get off on trolling the class, though. Whenever some force diagram in a homework assignment needed to be weightless, instead of being some generic spacecraft it would be “Mir” specifically. And he’d always use ‘cosmonaut’ instead of ‘astronaut’, that kind of thing.
One day about halfway through the semester, he’s doing this with in-class examples on the board, and one of the students finally gets up the guts to troll back a little. So this kid shouts from the back of the auditorium, “Hey professor, what’s the difference between a cosmonaut and an astronaut?”
And this beautiful man spins around on one heel to face the class, whiteboard marker triumphantly over his head, clearly having been waiting for this moment the entire semester:
“When I got my first cat, it changed me. There is something about holding a cat that makes your anger melt away. And if someone does something that upsets me—I have to remember my cat. I can’t keep my cat if I get into trouble.”
“I asked if Major Cabanaw had concerns for the safety of the cats. “Of course, we always want to ensure the safety of the cats, and the staff is great about keeping an eye out for them. But mostly, it’s the offenders keeping them safe. I have never once seen an offender kill his own cat. We screen them to be sure they have no history of animal abuse. But I’ll tell you this, there was a guy killed in here because he had spit soda pop onto someone else’s cat.””
Wow.
Cats now control the prisons. They now have an army.
This post went exactly where I expected. Well done.
i really love this program i feel like my heart is going to burst. there are so many great things about this program, these animals were going to be euthanized but they are being taken care of by people who need that kind of relationship for their mental well being. the prison system in america is messed up but this is definitely a step in the right direction. its such an innovative solution to both the issue of the negative social and psychological impact that prisons have and lowering the euthanization rates in animal shelters.
“we’re not just saving four-legged lives, we’re saving two-legged lives.”
It’s a proven fact that having inmates, even extremely violent criminals, care for a creature that is small and “helpless” has a positive impact on the criminals brain wiring. Where before they may have had little or even no regard for life, even their own, the animals foster a sense of empathy and responsibility. The inmate begins to consider the animals needs with every choice they make.
“I cant get into this fight cuse I’ll be put in solitary and my cat will miss me.”
“If I do some extra work in x area (laundry, kitchen, ect) I can earn credit for the store (many low security prisons have little general stores where they can buy things like cigarettes, chips, ect) and by Miss Molly that sweet catnip mouse.”
“Need to be on good behavior cuse when I get out I can give my cat a better life than this cell.”
And once out of prison, parolees have a reason to find legitimate work to get things their pet needs or get them special treats and toys. Often a parolee that just has to care for themselves will be able to justify either not getting something they themselves need or not working legitimately for those needs. When they do it for a pet, they often feel a real sense of accomplishment and believe their pet is proud of them for working hard.
Not to mention the effect animals have on depression and anxiety. Coming home to a pet that loves unconditionally after a hard day at work really makes it worth it.
