*communities

• With the exception of any article that’s even slightly political.

I don’t like to torture myself (or see others tortured) anymore, but in my youth, in the early days of the Internet, when that kinda shit was easier to find and harder to avoid, yeah, morbid curiosity led me to watching a few gore videos.

It left me desensitized for a long while, but I’m happy to say that I felt quite disgusted last time I saw a video like that a few years ago.

When I was a kid, Nightmare Before Christmas. Must’ve convinced my parents to take me to see it at least eight times. I’ve watched it at least once every year since then, and it stayed my favorite movie for most of my life, until Everything Everywhere All at Once finally usurped it almost 30 years later. Saw that in theaters four times.

Oh, and Lord of the Rings. Saw all three in theaters at least three times each. And, for some reason, Superbad. Went to five showings of that.

Temba, his arms wide.

If someone tells you they don’t care about pronoun usage, believe them. I’m nonbinary and don’t care what pronoun people use for me, because I identify as both male and female. Most people default to “he” for me because of my beard, but others use “they” because of my proclivity for wearing skirts, nail polish, and lipstick. Rarely I’ll have someone use “she” (or I’ll use it myself), but ultimately, I’m just a person who exists outside of the gender spectrum (or right in the middle), and pronouns are just a grammatical tool to save time, so I prefer that people use whatever comes most naturally to them.

Yesterday, while watching Beastars on Netflix, I shed some tears. Show’s surprisingly good, despite its furry leanings.

But the last time I sobbed was during the finale of the Last of Us show. As a dad, that penultimate scene wrecked me emotionally.

He’s a bit of both, I’d say.

I agree completely, but on the surface, those are the three biggest modern contributors.

A lot of people’s “sincerely held” beliefs are only skin-deep, so surface-level agitators and misinformation peddlers do have a lot of power in our society. If they ceased to exist, I suspect a lot of the hatred and vitriol their followers spew would cease, as well - assuming an equally-evil replacement didn’t immediately rise.

A lot of people are stuck in their stale echo chambers, and just getting a breath of fresh air could do them wonders.

True. He’s more a symptom than a cause. He certainly isn’t helping.

Fox News. Televangelists. Trump.

Religion can be a very positive tool to bring communities together and support one another, but capitalism means exploitation, and nothing’s easier to exploit than blind faith.

Thanks for the correction! I’ve fixed the post. 😁

Maybe I used the wrong descriptor. I’m not into screaming, so I tend to group all screaming/growling metal into the “black metal” label. 🤷‍♀️

Captain Squeegee. A rare combination of ska and psychedelic rock. Their album To the Bardos! is particularly great, and ranks among my top 5 albums of all time.

The Brotherhood of Dae Han. Southern rock with a hint of black metal metalcore.

Black Bonzo. A modern-ish prog band that sounds straight from the 70s.

Bubblemath. Progressive jazz fusion. Their first album was light on the jazz and pretty low-budget, but their second album, Edit Peptide, is the best in the subgenre, IMO.

Lotus Child. Indie alterna-rock. They only had one album, but it’s creative and interesting.

Correctamundo!

A guy just wants to leave his home country and see the world, but his dad won’t let him. Even when he gets past his dad, he still can’t quite make it. It’s in the blood.

Red Dead Redemption 2?

I don’t think many have beliefs rooted in hatred. Most “hateful” beliefs are rooted in fear and ignorance. I don’t usually look to pop culture for my moral philosophy, but I believe Yoda said it best:

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

It’s why leaving a podunk town to go to college usually makes people much more liberal and open-minded; they’re exposed to new ideas and a wider variety of people. Their fear of the unknown is replaced with connections to real people and experiential knowledge that everyone is an individual, no matter what their identity’s social stereotype may be.

In my experience, the path to enlightenment is paved with love and understanding. No matter how hateful & misguided a person may be, as long as they’re not a literal psycho/sociopath, showing them genuine compassion and a willingness to listen, not just preach, will almost always have a positive impact.

If any Star Trek series could pull it off, it’s Strange New Worlds. I’m hoping it goes the same route as Buffy’s Once More with Feeling, and uses it as a chance for some real character/relationship building.

I’m cautiously optimistic. 🤞

“Karen’s”

Just FYI, friend, the apostrophe is a punctuation mark used only to denote possession or missing letters - never plurals, even for proper nouns.