Hope the execs at Universal Pictures get absolutely fucked by all the fines and fees for damaging the trees at the picket line to sabotage the strikes. 🙏🏻

My favorite thing about hobbits is how no other race has any idea how they work so they can just... bullshit their way through literally anything? Bilbo turns invisible and the dwarves just go "Yeah sounds about right, Gandalf did say they're very sneaky" and don't guess about the Ring. Frodo gets stabbed by a troll spear and survives unharmed and Aragorn goes "Oh right, hobbits are supposed to be resilient, that checks out. Very impressive!" and nobody thinks to ask if he's got perhaps some kind of armor. I need to know what the line is. How weird does a hobbit need to get before they get called out??

I'd also like to point out the possibility that hobbits, who pride themselves in being so normal, might actually be the closest thing Middle-Earth has to faerie? Most people of most races are likely to never meet one, and if they do, they won't understand how they work except that they seem to have vague powers that only show up randomly as needed. Like yeah, Galadriel is scary, but the world at large knows 5 hobbits and they all seem capable of handling dragons, wraiths, wizards and the armies of Mordor and Isengard and live to tell the tale. Can anything kill a hobbit? Unclear!

PSA: Sieges Are Awesome

so I just watched ANOTHER TV show where the characters could have simply barricaded themselves inside a VERY cosy and defensible fortress instead of heading outside to get killed/maimed/captured by the baddies

I call this Television Abhors a Siege and it is EVERYWHERE and I hate it

I HATE IT

yes, I know the writers look at each other and say, well, if our characters retreat to their stronghold then how will we fulfill our Swords Go Clang quotient for this episode?

this is only because the writers lack both imagination and education

you see, I've been reading medieval military history in exhaustive detail now for 8 years and SIEGES ARE AWESOME, both tactically and dramatically!

tactically, sieges make sense, because there is no way to thwart an enemy and buy time like HIDING SAFELY BEHIND A STONE WALL. the only time you would not do this is when a) you have a realistic chance of pulling off a surprise attack (the TV characters are never smart enough to do this) AND b) there is no realistic hope of circumstances altering to favour you in the near future (the TV characters never consider this either).

also historically speaking, whenever people looked at each other and said "this siege has no realistic hope of success" they did not march out to throw themselves on the enemy's swords: they negotiated and usually with great success (the TV characters never consider this either).

but let's say you're in one of the VAST MAJORITY of situations where a siege DOES make sense and only the most unhinged mental gymnastics would justify leaving your fortifications to fight (see: the majority of TV shows and movies that deal with this scenario)? does this mean that your characters must sit inside their walls twiddling their thumbs?

pfft don't be silly

sieges are totally dramatic!

it's not about LEAVING your fortifications to fight, it's about USING your fortifications to fight.

your baddies could try everything to get in and there might be fighting over a gate, a breach, or a tunnel/mine?

your characters might sally out under cover of night to destroy the enemy or their weapons?

one of your characters might escape the fortress in a desperate journey to find help?

your characters might turn out to have a traitor or saboteur in the group?

there might be injured people who need urgent attention, or supply shortages?

a FRICKING METEOR might fall out of the sky onto the heads of your enemies, sending them running and allowing you the opportunity to regain the initiative? (and if you think this couldn't possibly have happened, something very close to this literally happened at Antioch in 1098 during the First Crusade)

anyway this is just to say that I am begging you all to reconsider the dramatic potential of the noble siege. for one thing, it makes the characters look like total imbeciles if you ignore it. and for another, sieges are AWESOME.

ill-advised beach trip

can we talk about the ups strike can we PLEASE talk about the ups strike

i know since writers and actors are already striking thats gonna take up most of the news space on social media but like. ups has until july 31st to meet the teamster's demands and if not then theyre going on the biggest strike against a single corporation since the early 1900s. the uaw (auto manufacturers union) contract is up this fall, and i believe the alu (amazon labor union) is as well. there's a huge possibility that they might strike as well, depending on how long the ups strike lasts.

im seeing a lot of talk about hollywood going down but i want to see more talk about labor rights and working class solidarity across the board... like A Lot of shit is about to go down

we're about to see a lot more propaganda by more than just hollywood, we're about to see a lot of bullshit political moves on local, state, and federal levels. dont fall for it. workers have power.

amptp’s bluffing by the way

A rebuttal to the Deadline article.

wait obsessed with the "wrong" choices

wanna hear a wild story? my brother’s history professor is closing in on 80 and basically lives at the university. one night my brother visited him for a meeting, and it came up that my brother was gonna be performing as a court jester at the castle the following day. and his professor busts out: “ah, that reminds me of my youth!”

he then proceeded to tell the tale of when he and his friends went backpacking to greece back in their early 20s. then one day they found themselves completely penniless. so they decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to set up acrobatic shows in skimpy outfits on the beach at day, and then drink up the money at night.

after a week or so they gained some traction, and a gang of young greek men walked up to them like “hey y’all are cool as hell, can we join y’all for drinks tonight?” and my brother’s professor was like “of course! y’all have to wear these revealing outfits and do somersaults with us tho” and the greek gang said “sounds dope. y’all are invited to live with us for however long y’all want.”

anyhow, they proceeded to live like this for the better part of 3 months, doing shows, drinking, and sleeping at the greek gang’s apartment. but after a while they decided enough was enough, and said thank you for everything, but we’re going back to sweden now. and the greeks said “sure! love y’all have a safe trip xx”

half a year later my brother’s professor gets contacted by the greek police. they ask him about the months they spent in greece, and then informs him that their greek friends have been convicted of serial homicide and robbery. that the group of young greek men had joined up with several tourist groups for several years “for drinks”, and then killed and robbed them all, terrorising the beach city for several years. with one exception, of course, because “this one group of swedish acrobats in slutty strongman suits were just ‘so damn nice’”.

and that’s the story of how one swedish history university professor survived sharing a flat with a group of serial killers for several months by performing acrobatics in slutty outfits on the beach. moral of the story? be kind of heart, thicc of ass.

1am thoughts

Show: you know that villain spike? The big bad? Actually he’s pathetic. He’s a wet cat. Not even the wife he’s devoted to can love him. He is unlovable and pathetic and just the worst and most useless.

Everyone: ah I see

Show: so you can all just get over him because he’s pathetic and horrible for it and—

Everyone: I desire him carnally

Show:

Show:

Show: what

Our love of Spike really shows that the adage “women just really love bad boys” is such bullshit because they thought by making spike not seem like such a bad boy that would make him lose his appeal when in reality what we like about what society deems “bad boys” is they’re inherently saying, “I reject society” which is why they’re called bad boys in the first place. Our society is an oppressive and abusive racist patriarchy and so men who are actively rebelling against that society (in fiction many real life “bad boys” unfortunately haven’t rejected society but were rather rejected themselves and so are just as bad with their misogyny and racism but also have an inferiority complex making it all worse) are incredibly appealing to women because they are rejecting the system that oppresses us and that is what is so appealing about bad boys, and that is why peeling back the bad boy image of spike and showing that he has a sensitive poet’s heart who loved his mother, is hopelessly devoted to drusilla, is loves bitch and is man enough to admit it, just made us love him even more 😹

Like them trying to create the perfect boyfriend and their attempt was RILEY 🤢 is so telling of how little they truly understand about the female gaze 😹😹😹 and that will never not be absolutely HYSTERICAL to me because they were SO MAD at how much we loved Spike- like I’m sorry you’re angry a character on your show is super successful and beloved?? Just how stupid are you that you tried to ruin that over and over and over again???

I'm going to need y'all to preemptively chill out because the actor's strike is going to mean a lot of things including shows and movies we've been anticipating being pushed way back, and absolutely minimal press tours for the next however long this lasts.

The effects of the writer's strike are months down the road which made it a whole lot easier to support because as third parties we weren't really being affected (yet), the effect of the actor's strike is going to be immediate and we're going to get a lot more propaganda of "these people are overpaid to begin with."

Remember our desire for content does not supersede these people's rights to live.

Support unions, support the strikes.

here at the sandwich shop, we’ve started to notice some people who are new to sandwiches aren’t used to meat and cheese between two slices of bread. they find this practice strange and confusing. that’s why we’ve decided to cut the bread out all together. from now on, we’ll just serve slices of meat and cheese on a plate.

we know that many of our loyal sandwich shop customers have been coming here for years to buy our delicious sandwiches. but some people don’t “get” sandwiches, and we need to try and appeal to them with an easier-to-understand meal format. we will no longer be serving sandwiches. all of our food will just be cold cuts on a paper plate. we love our customers and appreciate your understanding <3

Yes we know Craig's Cold Cuts down the street does cold cuts better than we do and has millions of customers. That's why we need to switch to cold cuts, to get their customers. We hope that our long-time sandwich loving customer base will be patient in this transition to cold cuts and welcome the certain influx of Craig's Cold Cut customers who will surely come here to enjoy our worse cold cuts with you, our sandwich-deprived customer base, whom we value so much.

gonna add a take, android is better then ios because ios was created by Apple to maintain a complete monopoly over every single part of the phone so that it is absolutely impossible to get it fixed anywhere but at one of their official stores or licensed repair stores where they can slap you with ridiculously high repair bills for simple fixes. Android isn't a type of phone, it's an operating system. it's the same shit with apple always using a weird ass charging cable when everyone else has been using USB for decades. uniqueness not for improving the quality of the product, but for increasing its price artificially through after purchase repairs upgrades and replacements.