Mangela Lansbury

Apple Cider, you are so much better than me at explaining these things and I am so jealous.

The adoption in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the adoption of a black aesthetic while ignoring black culture is a bad thing. You're taking something from a group of people without recognizing or respecting their history, and while ignoring their ongoing struggle. It's the kind of racism that I see in anime fans a lot -- the adoption of a "Japanese" aesthetic combined with thinking of Japanese people as a monolithic thing. There is little consideration for the lived experience of any individual Japanese person and the presumption that all Japanese people have lived a life that you are familiar with because you've consumed a part of their culture.

Appropriation is adopting the aesthetic without the experience. I've never met a white person with dreads who did it respectfully. It's always been part of some return to nature, new agey kind of person who just doesn't consider that they're taking a black aesthetic and relating it to the black people as savages stereotype by assuming a black aesthetic and putting it adjacent to the idea of "natural living." Those people might be out there, and like she says in the video, it's not necessarily bad that black culture is pop culture, but when you take parts of a culture you like and ignore the very real, existing, and ongoing plight of the people of that culture, that's a very bad thing. I guess I just don't understand how some bad actors invalidate the entire idea. I'm sorry that happened to your friend. Nobody deserves to be harassed to that extent. But their experience doesn't mean that cultural appropriation doesn't happen, or that it isn't a bad thing.

To get back to cultural appropriation, I saw a video a little while ago that was a pretty good primer on it.

This is why I sometimes bow out of conversations. I'll start typing something and halfway through just think, wow, I'm being an asshole! and just not.It's a hard thing to stop yourself from doing, so sometimes the best choice is to just leave room for someone else. I work in a building that has nothing around it and I walk in circles around it a few times a day because... desk job? I'm very used to the route and nothing and nobody is ever around (except the day the office next door had bouncy houses and I seethed with jealousy), so I can tap away at my phone while I do it!

The reason people generally get frustrated is because it's frustrating! It sucks having to explain cultural appropriation in every conversation you have about it, and the polarized climate that we live in has conditioned us to think that the labor of explaining generally isn't worth it because you'll put all this energy into something just to have someone engage with your text rather than your idea. This is why I felt compelled earlier to point out that people were disagreeing over words and not thoughts: When you spend the entirety of a discussion on what words to use, or how a certain person was inarticulate in some way, nothing is achieved but the frustration of all involved parties. Nobody learns anything and everyone leaves the same, but with higher blood pressure. Talking about words is useful sometimes, but it so often feels like the words radicals use get undue scrutiny, which always feels like an attempt to discredit the ideas behind the words without actually engaging with them. So yes, it's something that a lot of people, myself definitely included, need to work on, but there needs to be a certain receptiveness on either side. When someone is being condescending to you, it's probably not because of you, but because of the many people who came before you. Realize that, and try to be understanding. I hope that made sense, who knows, I am on my afternoon work walk sorry!!!

This is a problem of nomenclature, not of opinion. Racism is a process through which prejudice is expressed, but prejudice because of race exists outside of racism. The definitions of race and racism are complex and I don't have the time to type all that out since I'm just on break at work, so I just wanted to point out that this looks to me like a problem of words, not ideas.

I pronounce it kiwi in my head and just picture a bunch of birds and New Zealanders (hobbits, elves, etc) in a line. That image makes me smile, so I'm generally okay with the word now.

is this really did this what

That baby is adorable and your reactions to him are adorable and I'm so happy for you and your wife. Congratulations!

I'm just picturing him looking at a pair of pants and thinking something along the lines of, "But if they're 30 inches by 30 inches, why are they so much longer than they are wide???" and just staring at some pants in utter confusion.

I can't say what I thought about Ready Player One without coming across as a judgmental asshole, so... it was bad and I didn't like it at all and I hope none of you did either!

Ess jay double-u is so awkward to say! Why would you say that out loud, with your mouth, into another physically present human being's fleshy ears!

Basically, a brocialist is that one guy from your philosophy 101 class who thinks the Great Leap Forward was actually a great leap forward and Mao is a super cool dude and we need to abolish ideas of class because, I mean, look at China, they're doin' great, c'mon man, can't you just get behind me on this. I am ashamed of my past.

When I talk about the police, I don't talk about any given human being. I talk about the system the humans work in, and the assumptions they operate under. Given the epidemic of police violence in America, I think assuming that the penal system is unreasonable is, uh... reasonable. EDIT: I don't generally talk about any given human being, but I do sometimes. I guess I should clarify that. I'm not talking about individuals here, but the system they work within, through, and as.

What's the difference between an overnight forecast of "clear with periodic clouds" and "partly cloudy?" I do not understand what Google is saying about the weather. It just looks partly cloudy to me.

Why was the barricade there? To protect the federal courthouse, a building, ostensibly. If there were protestors inside the barricade, and they weren't threatening to safety of property, why arrest them? Why set up the barricade at all if the protests were largely peaceful on the side of protestors, but heinously violent on the part of the police? Certainly not to protect the citizens from those who would attack them, if the reaction to black people existing in a given space is to arrest those people. I don't think working off the assumption that the police act reasonably is a good place to enter into a discussion of how to interpret their actions.

I was indeed mistaken! I also don't think it's right to say they were trying to get arrested, or to necessarily characterize them "trying to get arrested" as inherently making being angry and upset over their arrest an unreasonable response. Queer communities used to stage die ins in situations that they knew would get them arrested because no one would pay attention to the fact that they were being ravaged by KS/HIV/AIDS. Now black people just keep dying, so they're doing what they need to do to be heard -- for their plight to be seen. Them demonstrating isn't a bad thing, but them being punished for doing so is. So many people still aren't paying attention, or they refuse to admit that we still live in a culture of white supremacy. Things still have to change, and that kind of protest is a viable way to get attention and change minds.

They're arresting peaceful protestors, and leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, in Ferguson. Netta. DeRay. Cornell. Don't know who else, but it's all just so... obviously specifically targeting leaders. In a county now under a state of emergency. America has got to change.

"What's on the agenda today, dad?" "Oh, you know, just gonna venture into the endless void of space, experiencing that special kind of wonder that only a very small, very select group of people have ever had the privilege to behold first-hand." "Oh, that's so cool! What for?" "Just hardwiring the basement for Internet. You know how spotty the internet is down there." this is how I imagine the conversations between space folk and mission control go

It was for Ocarina of Time. People were complaining because the character wasn't named Iwata, so they had to tweet about how the character name wasn't a donation incentive. https://twitter.com/GamesDoneQuick/status/626962026368270336

I must be a really callous, cynical person because all the "I'm in the hospital dying and this is my only solace" donation messages (or stuff like that, you get the idea) got really old really fast. I just don't think that many people were watching from the hospital. The Iwata thing got creepy, too. Naming someone in Earthbound after him makes sense, it's a sweet gesture, he worked on it, it's fine. But naming a character who dies and gets revived was in poor taste, and making enough noise about a character NOT being named after Iwata that the organizers feel compelled to address it on their Twitter is definitely a bridge too far. But like any sufficiently large thing, it has its highs and lows. I still enjoyed it overall.

It's not that he likes the porn that's weird/gross, but the ways and times he communicates this. I remember seeing him say something about Drow porn in a Reddit thread about some female cosplayers, for instance.

This will probably be better received over in a thread made for plugging your own stuff in Idle Banter. https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/6706-plug-your-shit/

Hahaaaaa I forgot about that, but kept the poor opinion of him, I guess! He also just seems really weird-in-a-bad-way every time I see him in a casual setting for something ("I am in a room with Sheever, one of the only women who puts up with the shitty things Dota fans throw at women, let's talk about the many ways women are inferior to men!"). And isn't it a gross little joke, how much he likes porn of Dota ladies? Ugh, he just makes my skin crawl.