wow, this is my first week of being on neocities. usually i write this stuff on my tumblr blog, but i thought i would have a go at moving it to neocities and changing the format to incorporate more of my thoughts again
i truly have no idea how to code or use html, but i'm doing my best and i did successfully manage to apply this nice stylesheet to make my blog look presentable, so hopefully my roundups won't look like a disaster. i am not a User in STEM in the slighest, and i did fail my scratch coding test in second year of high school... badly.
one caveat i'd like to make about my weekly roundups is that they're roundups of my week, not the week in general. so sometimes things might be relevant and super up-to-date, other times... not. i'm very behind on youtube, for one! like... eight months behind.
i'm trying to cut down on doomscrolling time (like everybody else) and read more, so this move to neocities is part of that (as well as engaging in what i'm reading by adding my thoughts again). i want to engage more in journalism, which is something that feels important but is eternally being squeezed by the modern world, and in people's critical reflections about culture and art and politics, etc.! but i also just want to have a record of the things i've watched, read, and listened to, because sometimes i think about something i read or looked at months ago only to find i can't remember it, and that's annoying as piss. no more!
for an example of something i was thinking about but struggled to find this week: this stunning chinese silk painting by joni zhou. this is made of thread. THREAD!!!
zuckerberg's increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers by cory doctorow
what in the 35p energy drink is this?: inside tiktok’s class problem by meg mcwilliam for radge magazine, an article on the rebranding of poverty porn for the tiktok generation, the monetisation of classism, and how classism so often goes unchallenged online.
the christian pivot: abusive men and conspirituality by lily o'farrell. i was very interested in conspirituality with regard to pastel qanon and the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline, but this article highlighted the unexpected pivot to christianity in what was projected to be an increasingly secular world and ties it to an expanded understanding of conspirituality that encompasses the christianity of the alt-right. (the comment on the crispness of russell brand's bible is a rare yet sharply cutting insult.)
no return by william finnegan for the new yorker. i am no climber and i am a random person who knows only about this trial through this article and others, but in my humble and random opinion, this guy fucking SUCKS and is responsible for kerstin's death and i think the sentencing was far too lenient. i understand why climbers are anxious about the precedent here, but to me, leaving somebody on the mountain to die of hypothermia despite NUMEROUS options to help (mountain rescue, her bivouac bag) is killing someone, and the way he acted about it is extremely dodgy and it seems like he was actively trying to prevent her from getting help -- AND it not being the first time he did this to a woman? this guy is a danger imo.
i found the worst book ever written by frankie's shelf. possibly youtuber hyperbole, though this could be the worst book frankie has ever read; nonetheless, the descriptions of this book made me want to put my head in my hands and groan. i apologise to the humble footnote for their dire misuse. hashtag cringe.
the gay taylor swift conspiracy by shanspeare, a beautiful ending to pride month. THIS is investigative journalism...
i watched this tiktok by bookswithamanda212 on biological essentialism and benevolent sexism. i thought it was a good summary and reminder of why even what we might perceive as "positive" ideas about women can have harmful impacts; often stuff about the 'divine feminine' is overlooked despite being a known point of radicalisation for women, but it always brings me back to the classic ursula le guin quote:
But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?
(sidenote: has anybody ever considered this quote in relation to the tombs of atuan? we talked about it in my class and i think about it sometimes: tenar is worshipped as a vessel of the gods but is also one that is below the surface, and she is stuck for most of the novel feeling blindly through the labyrinth...)
this week is the first week of wimbledon, and on the very first day naomi osaka absolutely served - and not just during the match! vogue did an interesting write-up on the thoughts behind the outfit.
