This lad 👏

Working on next semester's courses. I'm excited about updating my World Lit course -- I'm shifting it to a film class where we're going to look at Asian films in pop culture genres. I have so many ideas, I'm going to have to cut them down. I'm thinking of:

Fantasy: CrouchingTiger, Hidden Dragon (Wu Xia) -- can also double as romance too.

Action/Adventure: Raid: The Redemption (because this flick did if first and best)

Detectives: Detective Dee and the Secret of the Phantom Flame (gorgeous movie) -- can also be historical

Westerns: The Good, The Bad, and the Weird (I have a soft spot for this crazy movie)

Comedy: Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow is hysterical)

Children's Animation: Spirited Away (of course, there has to be a Ghiblii flick!)

Musical: Bride & Prejudice (have to have a Bollywood big budget with lots of dancing) -- can also be romance

Problem is, I can't do them all! Not enough time. Going to have to cut it down.

Then I'm going to make them do reports on books/movies from other non-Western cultures in the same genres -- Latin American Detectives, African children's books, Middle Eastern fantasies. Been really hard to find authors in the pop culture genres outside of the U.S. and Europe -- I'm gonna have to expand to people born in the country who are now living in the U.S. or the U.K. (like Nnedi Okafodor).

Anybody know any books by Post-colonial authors in pop culture genres? I'm open to YA and middle grade since most of my students are in education and will be teaching middle and high school some day.

So I was just thinking about those posts you get in the Discworld tag about the way belief works on the Disc and how Vetinari and/or Vimes is so integral to the way Ankh-Morpork works that they might just sort of… not ever die.

You know, the ones like ‘Vimes is going to become a god of policemen and he’s going to hate it”.

Well. What if it happens to both of them? There are two parts to the city, after all. ‘Proud Ankh’ needs taking down a peg or two (or seven) by Sam Vimes, and if anyone can terrify ‘pestilent Morpork’ into being better then it’s Havelock Vetinari. And they can drive each other mad with stealth puns for centuries, if they want.

Also, this would potentially make them literally Law And Order, and that just seems very fitting in a way that would probably annoy them both.

My favourite sort of riff on this is the idea that they aren’t there ALL the time, but if someone who’s taken over their authority or whatever starts fucking up, they become Active. 

Sort of like Carrot’s comment in Men At Arms: when you need them, you REALLY need them, but when you don’t, best if they just go away and get on with things (in their cases, being dead). So when things are going all right it’s very quiet and ordinary. 

And then when things start going WRONG suddenly you have things like the current patrician waking up to a Very Angry Manifestation of the Late Duke of Ankh, proceeding to remind him or her (would it be matrician, then?) about How Things Are Done (By Law). 

Or the abusive Commander of the Watch coming into his or her office to find a calm man, thin man like a predatory flamingo there to discuss the virtues of temperance and accountability and not having his/her Watch-house and/or personal lodgings being literally struck from on high by a meteor (can’t be lightning, Vimes and Io can’t even exchange a civil sentence, but Vimes has always been good at getting around these things). 

And yes in the mean time when things ARE quiet, they can watch everything and get on each other’s nerves and it’s basically like Colon’s office except instead of for old street monsters it’s for ancient legends of civil justice who can’t quite stand to even fade away and still have enough people believing and invoking them that they can stick around and growl when people get out of line. 

Discworld Heritage Post

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Intelligence of Plants”, from the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett (via peatbogbodyhasmoved)

@palaquinn

Time for a new Jelly, new good vibes! Good luck everyone, it’s gunna be good soon

The Creature: You made me, therefore you must bear the consequences of my creation.

Victor Frankenstein: Nuh-uh

The Creature: fym nuh-uh?

@big-ol-bumble-bee relevant

May the Supernatural money come your way

Sam’s face tho

He wants them money

Always reblog this

Reblog for good fortune in your future

This is the money Sammy, reblog and much moneys will come your way

Dolla dolla make da moose holla

Come on Sammy. We’re going to hunt down some Dollars

Dad’s on a dolla trip…and he hasn’t been home in a few days.

there aint no me if there aint no dolla

I need Dolla

Saving up, Hunting dolla, The family bank.

I’m done with this fandom

Dolla stack so fat make a moose go…

Remember fandom children: A dolla a day make a moose say heyyy

Dear god

So that’s where we are On the bank so far Saving dollars Hunting cash, the family business back in swing

Driving down the road so far (scaping from the police)

What’s wrong with this fandom

Everything

[hiatus intensifies]

may you be gripped tight and raised from bankruption 

Crowley: king of Debt Castiel: angel of the Wealth

#we’re all on drugs

What the fuck is even going on here

The fuck did I just walk into

I pray to Cashiel to get his feathery ass down here

Did somebody say, *Dolla hunting!*

Team free dolla $2.0

what they don't tell you is that a well-written fic can get you to ship anything, and i mean ANYTHING. notp? not anymore. you will stay up late thinking about and crying over them for the rest of your life. characters you don't even know from a piece of media you've never engaged with? fuck it, they belong to you now. problematic ship that you loved to hate and now just love to love, that you must never tell your friends about? don't worry, ao3 knows how to keep a secret. like. a well-written fic will have you acting UP and that's a fact baby !!

@cakeisnotpie

This is absolutely true. I had no interest whatsoever in Phlint until I read your work. None. And now they're an OTP for me.

For all those "nu-uh, academic texts need to use complex words for complex concepts" - I agree, and yet I have read papers as needlessly pompous and inaccessible as the parody above. Two things can be true at once

The worst thing is I understood that tweet without difficulty. I swear I have read some papers that make that parody look clear and succinct.

The proper terminology is needed to be specific, yes, but wording should never be complicated just because it can be.

I just can't help but disagree with academics' need to use jargon and complexity. Look. Being a lawyer means using a lot of jargon and trying to explain complicated concepts. But good legal writing means trying to make those concepts accessible. You can have a dialogue with experts within your community while also being clear and concise. It's literally my job to do that.

As someone who now gets to edit other people’s formal writing, I think one of the main issues is when people are trying to be fancy they use extremely lengthy, complex sentences. You can use jargon without being opaque if your sentence structure is clear and straightforward. But people with legal/academic backgrounds put so many asides in their writing in the name of specificity that it’s difficult to understand them in the first read through. I’m a huge proponent of footnotes and bullet points to add clarification without bogging down the point.

Example edit of the above:

The opacity of academic prose perpetuates exclusion to the detriment of academic research.

Key drivers:

Outcomes:

You obviously wouldn’t use this style for a paper, but I am confident the structure makes it more accessible without changing the jargon.

This is brilliant. When I can't use bulleted list, I will: (1) separate things internally like this, or (2) just use short sentences.

@palaquinn relevant to your project with your former coworker and to the stuff you're dealing with right now

Me: can’t find my glasses most days (they’re usually on top of my head)

Also me, memorized what type of mast cell mediators cause which symptoms and how they are liberated after a doctor snidely asked me if I “knew what half those words meant” or if I just “read about it on Google.”

fucker.

May that guy always get exactly all and everything he deserves.

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