Something that gave H.P. Lovecraft nightmares is the work of my favorite artist. In “At the Mountains of Madness” he specifically mentions “the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich.”

This is what Roerich’s paintings look like:

#hp lovecraft thought penguins were grotesque and horrifying#he was not a difficult man to frighten

@comicaurora, didn’t you talk about him having a story about being scared of air conditioning? Or did I just make that up

you’re thinking of “Cool Air” and technically he’s only scared of air conditioning used by zombie immigrants

Just watched the banned Moon Girl episode.

>the episode addresses the topic of trans kids in sports >the entire episode is about how bigots will always move the goalpost, and playing by their rules is pointless >the solution is not to play their game and break the rules >it also states that trans people should never feel like a burden >the character Brooklyn is explicitly stated to be trans >there is also an explicitly nonbinary character >multiple mentions of pride and depictions of pride flags, trans flags and progress flags

I'm not at all surprised this didn't get past the censors but I'm so mad that it didn't, because this could've been something really special, and the fact it was canned after being fully finished is downright painful. This episode was wonderful and I'm grateful to all the people who worked on it, and angry that their hard work was wasted. Disney did not deserve you.

Here's a link, as long as Disney doesn't take it down

August 26 2017 - Some sad news, Negro Matapacos (Black Copkiller), Revolutionary Chilean riot dog, friend to worker and student alike, has sadly passed away. Rest in Power, furry comrade. [gifs from this video]

November 16 2019 - Protesters brought a giant statue of Santo Negro Matapacos to demonstrations in Santiago. [video]

ID credit: 3846465911 on 小红书

(please like, reblog and give proper credit if you use any of my gifs!)

100% Disagree

It’s an underdog story about classism in which the folk hero (Johnny) is confronted by a powerful man (the Devil) who tries to exploit the hero’s perceived ignorance and inferiority by offering a great reward with impossible odds. Although Johnny warns him that looks can be deceiving, and that he’s going to regret the dare because Johnny is the “best there’s ever been”, the devil is blinded by his greed and arrogance.

The devil creates an awful cacophony of technically excellent fiddle playing that would be impossible for Johnny to replicate. It’s a trick.

But Johnny just grins at him and starts to play “simple” classic country fiddling songs - Fire On The Mountain, House Of The Rising Sun, and Daddy Cut Her Bill Off. He doesn’t rise to beat the Devil - he simply creates his own music from his home, in the style that he knows, and his love of it and the familiarity of the music make his “backwoods” fiddling more perfect than the Devil could ever achieve.

It is thus the devil’s pride, not Johnny’s, that allows Johnny to Bugs Bunny his way into a golden fiddle.

(In that sense, I do agree that it is the most American song: in a land of prejudice and inequities, great power lies - dormant but ever-present - in those we underestimate and attempt to exploit.)

It’s so easy to underestimate the significance of the fact that all of Johnny’s songs are classic folk-americana tunes, honestly! Like, of course thematically what matters is meeting “technically challenging but obnoxious” with “genuinely skilled and beautiful, you just didn’t expect him to be good because he’s poor,” but the music choices are significant for another reason.

Bluntly: Standards.

Sure, the Devil’s portion of the song is extremely technically challenging to replicate....but that’s only relevant to us, retelling the story and trying to replicate it. He didn’t have that standard to be judged against. He just did a bunch of complicated lightning-fast screeching, and tried to set Johnny up to match him, and lost when the kid refused to play that game. The bargain, after all, wasn’t “anything you can do I can do better”. It was just “I’m a better musician than you” and Johnny is the one who actually understands what that means.

But also: all of those name-dropped tunes are incredibly iconic. They’re at least as extremely technically demanding, but more importantly, if Johnny had fucked up even one note it would have been immediately obvious. Every musician in that area knows those tunes. He had to play them perfectly, blend them seamlessly together, and put his own spin on them in order to meet the challenge, and there were no imperfections for the Devil to claim victory over.

All the Devil had to do was make noise. Nobody could tell him that he did it “wrong” because the obvious retort is “no, that’s exactly what I was trying to do, if you think I did it wrong then let’s see you do it better” and that, right there, is the trap. 

Johnny had more heart, of course--that’s the point, that lightning-fast fretting work is nice and all but if you don’t understand and respect the history and culture and the interplay of music you’ll always be lesser than those who do. But he also gave himself the better demonstration of skill, because he did the harder thing, and held himself to a pre-existing standard.

(Also he didn’t summon an entire goddamn backup band to do the heavy lifting for him, but like. Of course this is the American folklore Devil, the trickster-spirit archetype figure who is really more akin to the Fae and not the actual Christian concept of Satan, but “the Devil cheated” still isn’t exactly an instant disqualification. That’s kind of a given. He is, after all, the Devil.)

I would like to note my mother got to see Charlie Daniels play this live, and there’s one more reason the Devil lost:

Care.

See, apparently Charlie Daniels actually kept extra fiddles on the stage for this song, because playing the Devil’s part WILL snap the fiddle strings. Yes, both Johnny and the Devil have longer solos in the live version because this song is really just Charlie Daniels showing off (earned, though, lbr), but my mom said his fiddle strings were literally SMOKING long before he got into the extended part. And so by necessity, when one set of strings snapped he’d drop the fiddle and pick up another.

The Devil is using his fiddle the same way he uses people: he’s abusing it, treating it as something worth nothing but disdain. I want to pause here briefly and note that when this song was originally written, the best violins in the world were considered to be the Stradivarius violins; there are now modern violins that match or beat their sound, but that’s an EXTREMELY new innovation. This means the Devil is likely playing on a violin worth tens of thousands of dollars; even if he’s conjured an infernal violin for himself, the contempt he shows for Johnny’s (implied) poverty and simplicity says it doesn’t look like just any old violin. And yet, he treats it like garbage—and that’s exactly what comes out of it.

(If you’re wondering where the violin comes into this, a fiddle is a violin played differently, and this is one great way to show the difference between “high” and “low” art is spelled B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.)

Meanwhile, Johnny is some backwoods hick who’s probably never even heard the word Stradivarius, wouldn’t know what to do with one if he had one, and likely plays an absolute shitkicker that looks like hell and cost him fifteen bucks at the pawnshop.

But Johnny VALUES his fiddle. He doesn’t so much play it as make love to it. What we hear is beautiful because he understands he’s not the only one with a soul; instruments have souls, too. He’ll take that solid gold fiddle because he can use the money, but he’ll go right on playing his cheap beat-up old thing until the day he dies. He loves it like he loves his home and his music, and that love makes magic.

The Devil loses because he doesn’t understand the concept that love will beat out greed every time. Johnny wins because he values and respects what he has.

[Image description: screen shot of a social media post from Brendan Frasier Crane (@bf_crane): "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is the most American of songs, because it's set up like a cautionary tale about pride leading to a fall but it turns out the fiddler actually is the best and his vanity is justified. 9:23 PM. 05 Jul 23. 137K Views. Description ends.]

Also, the Devil values his fiddle because it's made of gold. But and actual golden fiddle would sound terrible -- not like a handcrafted instrument carved from wood. Like other Capitalists, the only value the Devil can understand is monetary value.

BTW, for those interested, here are the fiddle tunes referenced in Charlie Daniel's song:

Fire on the mountain (some eye contact):

House of the Rising Sun (some eye contact):

Chicken in the bread tray (pan):

Granny, will your dog bite?

@changelingfangs

I love how it's assumed in this thread you've heard this song, but I'm just gonna drop it. It's not only worth a listen, but look, there he is, fiddling away. There is no second fiddle. He done play the devil too.

That Seems Totally Unnecessary. 

Foolish boy. Don’t you know anything about Fantasia? It’s the world of human fantasy. Every part… Every creature of it is, a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.

THE NEVERENDING STORY (1984)

Good time to remember how this book was written by a German dude, and the film was directed by another German dude. I’m just saying, they understood the assignment.

@elodieunderglass

Thank you!

recently we were out on a hilltop taking photos of the comet and suddenly some car's headlights blind us from across the bay. literally four miles away.

who the fuck is out here with these nuclear fusion powered headlights. who puts naval searchlights on their fucking toyota tacoma.

Sodus Point, east of Rochester, NY

mystery solved

I actually meant to put this in my drafts so I could come up with a response more articulate than the incorrect buzzer sound that went through my head when I read this, but I guess I didn’t do that, so let me just say: both of these are bad.

This is not a competition. Both of these are bad.

It’s also baffling because this is the opposite of what we’re seeing from AI editing software geared towards professional writers, which is deliberately designed to “simplify complex words” for “greater legibility.” (Often with questionable results.)

Programs like Grammarly and PRA use their “integrative AI” to simplify everything down to the bare bones because it thinks words like “devoid” are too complicated for the average reader to understand.

It’s why so many of the newer books read kinda samey right now. Writers are being trained out of using complex language by AI to appeal to readers (supposedly), and kids and non native English speakers who are using “complex” language are being marked down for using AI when they’re not.

It’s a fucking nightmare.

In fact don't work on a GLoriOus Rapture for the Good Ones Revolution at all.

Change the world without a tide of blood yeah? If we can't we can't. But we have to try until we can't.

Speaking as one of the ones who is usually collateral damage in any major Violent Plan- the disabled, the weak, the sick, the wounded, the disadvantaged, the very young and the very old;

We aren't disposable fuel for the fires of ~revolution~. You're going to need a better approach.

"When people say stuff like Cleanse the State with the Blood of the Martyrs, it's NEVER BLOODY THEM!" -Sir Terry Pratchett, via Rincewind

You can see someone else also using the devices' second seat, and I think that's so cool. Mobility devices help everyone, here other employees also get a chance to sit while they're working. I just love mobility aids, man. It's like the cut curb effect

My husband worked as a professional cook for 30+ years, but diabetes resulted in neuropathy in his feet. He can no longer stand long enough to work as a cook. Something like this would be a game changer for people like him.

Screeching

same energy

what the fuck is this monstrosity

Wh-

I started watching this and thought “this doesn’t look too bad, what’s everyone–what–wait–oh no–OH NOOOOOOO”

we were fine until here i was like why are people mad about a sausage and egg burger thing

@stealingyourbones

bet u won’t

Odd way to make a lasagna, but okay.

THE WAY SHE POSED AFTERWARDS HFKFBDK

My artistic rendition: