In case you missed it, I wrote about how gray-asexuality is portrayed in mainstream media. Gray-asexuality is a highly prevalent, as well as historically significant group within the asexual spectrum, but you wouldn’t know it from media coverage, which tends to ignore gray-asexuality entirely.
Samantha’s ‘Oo Antava’ item song attempts to subvert the male gaze, but does it? | The News Minute – This is a random article I found by looking up some Indian pop music, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into feminist arguments from another part of the world. According to the article, many “item songs” in Indian cinema engage in objectification of women, but this particular song instead scrutinizes the male gaze, saying men will ogle regardless of what a woman wears. But there’s criticism that the song excuses men by depicting men’s lust as automatic or uncontrollable. And on the other end, a men’s association apparently filed a lawsuit against the song for portraying men too negatively? Nobody knows anything about that lawsuit, but from an American perspective it’s the most baffling aspect.
How Call of Duty turned war into a circus | Polygon (video, 27 min) – This video explains the recent history of the portrayal of war in movies and video games. While high violence was initially used for anti-war purposes, it became an object of entertainment. Call of Duty became increasingly over the top and jingoistic (taking funding from the US military), even as it continued to proclaim authenticity.
Reproductive “choice” and abortion | Pervert Justice – I’m not going to say much about the latest news on abortion, I am not the right person for that. On this subject I defer to other voices, and you could certainly do worse than Crip Dyke. This article rebuts the argument that women already have such easy access to birth control, that they shouldn’t need abortions. Okay, but they do need abortions, so that suggests that it’s incorrect to assume easy access to birth control?
Yellowstone Won’t Explode And End Civilisation (Sorry) | Soup Emporium (video, 26 min) – I found this new youtube channel which does socially conscious skeptical videos, as well as media analysis. I like the whole channel, I guess I’ll just recommend the most recent video?
Shane Dawson, 9/11 Trutherism, and Cancel Culture | Big Joel (video, 12 min) – Big Joel points out how the “cancelling” of Shane Dawson drew attention to his history of black face and making light of pedophilia, but didn’t say anything about his overt advocacy for 9/11 trutherism. I’m betting most people here don’t know who Shane Dawson is, and don’t care, so this isn’t really about setting the record straight on some ridiculous celebrity. It’s more of an examination of what people consider appropriate or inappropriate to “cancel”. As Joel put it, cancelling is a genre that comes with certain expectations about the subject of criticism. For example, people expect a callout to reveal “hidden” hypocrisy, while overlooking more direct and overt forms of evil.
Philippines election set to bring dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ family back to power with landslide win for son Bongbong | CBS News – WTF is going on in the Philippines??
I had a hard time with all the weird ways he spoke geology terms compared to the California ways to say them. I had to turn the CC on. But boo hiss, I understand the science just fine and think he’s no fun.
We used to joke about the Holocene being the Anthropocene at college forty years ago. Nobody’s laughing about it now. Our Mother can surprise us, that’s for sure.
The error I see in the video is this: it concentrates so much on geology it ignores human response. Human beings eat. Human beings will fight to get food. The little ice age and the year of no summer had zero nuclear weapons. Two years of temperature drops all on their own might not kill all of civilization, but it might be enough of a catalyst given how nasty homo sapiens sapiens is already. So not all hope is lost!