#Public discourse studies

[janeemmanuel]

LEGACIES OF SLAVERY & REPARATIONS - FULLY FUNDED 4-YEAR PHD PROGRAM

📝 PhD Studentship – The Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery and Reparations (Media/Culture) Category: PhD  |  Location: UK & Caribbean 🌍 Overview The UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS-CMII), in partnership with the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, is offering a fully funded four-year PhD studentship. This research opportunity focuses on the…

[danishphoner]

one thing that really fascinates me about alex is his devotion to art – and more specifically, how he chooses to get some inspiration from scientific works of what he aims to implement in his art. every time one gets to examine some of his lyrics, or even how he explains these lyrics in an interview, they can be greeted by some bits of actual scientific information. an example is how he named his taquería on the moon with the term “information-action ratio”, coined by the critic neil postman, and referenced it in the song four out of five, something that might also indicate an interesting articulation with postman's concept. the line “cute new places keep on popping up”, for example, can express his well-known sardonic discontent regarding the flood of information being generated and transmitted over and over and, as much as it seems visually appealing and does give the idea of benefiting from advanced technologies, it doesn't really add anything substantial to the receiver's critical thinking – and worse, it distances the information receiver from the sender in a communication channel, according to postman.

what i'm saying with this interpretation is, it's known that alex is enamoured with the idea of gathering a bunch of references and condensing them into a mixture of metaphors in his writing, but it's so thrilling how, at times, we can find some bits of science inside of it – and it's even more exciting, just like playing a puzzle game, to find these references and analyse them by doing a similar research to what he did to create his works.

[penguininmypocket]

cheeky turkish studyblr in a park while I'm waiting. don't look too closely at the utter gobbledygook I'm writing

🎧 - Rachmaninoff Piano Concerti 1 & 2, Vladimir Ashkenazy & the London Symphony Orchestra

[kenyaamzee]

Between Credit and Consequence: Observations on the Audience, Quiet Hierarchies, and the Subtle Pitfalls of Monopolising Collective Memory

Something curious is happening. On the surface, a dispute of names, exhibitions, images and intent. A tangle of creativity, memory, and misrecognition. Beneath that, however, it begins to resemble something else. A mirror reflecting an older, deeper conversation. 

I’ve been closely observing the public responses to a recent moment in the creative world involving the Woza Sisi Collective and Trevor Stuurman. The perspectives shared by artists, audiences, and institutions alike have highlighted an overdue conversation. One that extends beyond the specifics of this case, while still being shaped by it. What the collective has surfaced bravely and with clarity, gestures toward something far older, far more embedded: the quiet mechanics of power in creative spaces, the subtle influence of language and the uneasy question of how easily harm can be reframed or dismissed, especially when it leaves no visible trace depending, of course, on who is doing the looking.

Public sympathy often follows charm, profile, or reputation. This is why it is worth asking who is believed, and why? Who is protected, even when no one explicitly defends them? Who is allowed to speak candidly, without fear that the act of voicing discomfort will cost them more than it reveals?

As our nation becomes increasingly litigious, many significant and legitimate cases are overshadowed by sensationalism, gossip, or the phenomenon of 'trial by social media'. In this case, we desperately need to remain focused and remember that to name influence is not to accuse. Seeking context is not a threat. Nonetheless, the arts are rarely neutral territory. Even within liberatory language, there are unspoken rules. Who may critique whom, who can express harm and still be invited back in? This moment, then, isn’t solely about one artist. It speaks to broader conditions. To how unease is so easily repositioned as aggression and how precarious it is to hold both admiration and disappointment in the same hand.

The archive is often treated as sacred, a home for memory. Yet archives are also constructed through power. Some people are remembered, cited and entered. Others are left out. Across time, Black women and queer bodies have curated, documented, imagined, and preserved. Often, their work enters the world unaccompanied by their names. Their titles, frameworks, and aesthetics become detached, reused not as homage, but as raw material. This may not always be ill-intentioned. Still, it leaves the work unanchored.

Creative labour (especially when it comes from Black women, collectives and queer bodies) is often seen as ambient. It is not always recognised as authored or proprietary. When a boundary is drawn, the response is rarely equal. Others can be questioned and still emerge intact. Their reputations survive. Their careers continue. In a field where harm is only recognised when named by the powerful, staying silent can become a form of protection. The term ‘Collaboration’, can so often be used but by the time we realise it was instead exploitation, too much has been lost in translation. You risk falling into a sort of “career limbo” if you choose to raise your concerns. 

This moment does not ask for cancellation. Instead for a different kind of presence. One that is slower, more deliberate and grounded in care rather than performance. True accountability means remaining in the room when discomfort arises. It means saying, “I see you. I hear you. Let’s talk.”.

We are often drawn towards binaries: inspiration or theft, intention or impact, love or harm. The truth often resides in quieter places. It lives in the dissonance of recognising harm without villainy. Good intentions do not always soften difficult outcomes.

When something deeply personal is echoed elsewhere without your name- It is the ache of erasure dressed as coincidence, the slow burn of navigating spaces where credit is optional and silence is expected. What lingers is not just exclusion, but what happens when Black women voice unease and are met with dismissal rather than curiosity. As if naming harm is more disruptive than causing it.

Still, we speak.

Some of us remain one sentence away from being forgotten. Others are never asked to explain. Somewhere in between, the art keeps moving. Sometimes with us. Sometimes without us.

[mikeru-funzies]

did this have to happen before exam week

[wrenfea]

The burden of keeping training data free of copyrighted data-poisoned works should be on the company using it, not on the people just trying to protect their works.

[folkjester]

i am studying substance use disorders and neurobiology of drugs so i have had many times where ive said something along the lines of “time to take my drug test” or “i need to finish doing meth”

AND i’m LGBTQ studies minor so ive had a lot of classes that ive called stuff like Gay Class, Trans Class, Sex Class. best one was probably gay movie class

taking a class on sex this semester which has resulted in many fun things like "sex activity" and "sex final" being added to my planner. being very mature and serious about this .

[bayesic-bitch]

It's always so weird that like. Fully a third of job listings I see in machine learning are for biomedical research. And easily two thirds of postdocs. Massive, huge family of applications that seems completely absent from the public discourse. From the way people talk about it you'd think half the field works in image generation and nobody does medical research, but in reality only a tiny handful of people seem to be doing image generation, and everyone else is either doing language models or studying cancer and designing novel drugs

[lockea]

I've been seeing a lot of Discourse around outdoor cats that talks past one of the biggest problems addressing community cats/outdoor working cats so I thought I'd chime in with my two cents.

Many arguments I see just... don't think about the cats at all? Or don't consider the logistics of actually addressing the feral cat problem in a humane way. It's always about how outdoor cats shouldn't be outdoors, which is neither realistic nor helpful.

I used to volunteer at an municipal animal shelter in the USA that had a TNR program (Trap, Neuter, Return) and also adopted out community cats to local farms and businesses. Here's my side of the story.

"Your cat doesn't need to be outside" -- Yes, correct. Your domesticated (non-feral) house cat does not need to go outside at all. They can have a fully actualized life safely indoors. When I see this argument, proponents of indoor only cats are correct in most or all their arguments regarding this.

"Outdoor cats are the largest invasive species in the world, and decimate bird populations." -- This is also correct, and part of the reason why you can help by bringing your house cat indoors. Cats are the largest invasive species. Spay and Neuter your cats, bring them inside, and socialize them so they don't become feral.

"TNR doesn't work." -- False. Whether we like it or not, feral cats exist. We have two methods by which we can address the feral cat population -- decimating them (humanely euthanizing the whole colony) or TNR. For a long time, euthanasia was the preferred way to address the feral cat problem. Afterall, if the cats aren't there, doesn't that save the local wildlife population?

Except that we found, studying these colonies, that when a colony is wiped out, the cats of another colony will spread into their territory and continue to have kittens and the population of feral cats is neither controlled nor diminished.

Hence, TNR. What we found performing TNR on cat colonies was that this controlled the population of the colonies, allowing them to stay in their territory, which kept other colonies from spreading (especially colonies we hadn't performed TNR on yet). We at the shelter felt this was the most humane way to control the feral cat population and safely deflate their existence without dealing with the population blooms that euthanasia caused.

"What about kittens?" -- Kittens from these colonies were brought into the shelter, socialized, and fostered out until they could be adopted. Some of these semi-feral kittens needed special homes to be adopted into, but this was the best quality of life for these cats.

"What about cats that get missed during TNR?" -- We would return to the colony several times over a period of several years to perform TNR on the same colony. We mark cats that have been neutered by clipping their ear (this is done humanely, but is the most reliable way to tell if a cat has been neutered so the poor thing doesn't have to have surgery 3-4 times in their life). Also, during the TNR process the cats would be vaccinated to ensure disease did not spread from the colony (i.e. rabies). Still, even getting 60% of the colony TNR'd would dramatically reduce the number of kittens being added to the colony each year. This controlled the population by allowing the territory to naturally deflate in size over time, buying us time to address the larger feral cat problem.

"What if the colony was in an unsafe location?" -- There were two ways we addressed unsafe colony locations -- remember, we know that when the colony is removed, a new colony will move into its place, so we tried not to move the colony unless we really felt the cats or the public was unsafe -- one was to move the whole colony to a new location. Preferably someplace like a warehouse where we have an agreement with the owners of the warehouse. Some of the cats were even relocated to shelter grounds as our community cats. If the colony was small enough we would bring them into our Feral Cats room and adopt them out as community cats.

"What is a community cat?" -- The way the program worked, was that anyone who needed a working cat could apply to the program. These were often rural farmers or businesses with warehouses that needed rodent protection. We trained the farmers and businesses on how to acclimatize the cats to their new home, and as part of the agreement, they had to care for the cats (veterinary care, vaccinations, food and water). This gave businesses and farms an alternative to expensive and environmentally unfriendly rodent control, and also gave these feral cats good places to live out their natural lives.

"Can't you just adopt out feral cats?" -- No. Cats that have not been socialized around humans as kittens, or who have several generations of feral cat in them could not interact with humans in a way that did not cause them undue stress. This was not a humane way to handle feral cats. However, when a cat was brought into the feral cat room, they would be monitored for up to a week. If the cat displayed signs of being semi-social or fully social (hanging out outside of their den, allowing staff to pet them, showing interest in staff in the room), then we would either move the cat into the adoption room or place them in foster to be socialized before adoption. Feral cats who displayed signs of being able to live full and healthy lives with human companions were NOT adopted out as community cats. We also observed this behavior during TNRs and would do the same for those cats too.

"But aren't cats bad hunters?" -- Compared to other species, cats are not the most effective form of rodent control. This is true. However, you have to understand that feral cats exist. There is no "undo" button we can push to stop them from existing. We have to deal with the problem we have right now, which is to safely and humanely decrease the number of feral cats in our communities. And yes, we do that by using cats as rodent control in the community.

"What can I do?" -- Stop saying community cats shouldn't exist. That's not helpful and doesn't solve the problem we have. Bring your cat indoors. Spay and neuter your cats. Adopt from shelters. Volunteer with a TNR team. Support TNR efforts in your community. Recognize that those of us actively dealing with the community/feral problem are trying to do what is in the best interest of our communities and the animals we love. We aren't sitting over here saying these cats should exist -- a feral cat will not have the same quality of life as one that is indoors with a family -- but we have to address the problem in practical terms. We don't have the moral high ground to just do nothing while pontificating solutions that have no basis in actuality.

And yes, it's okay to celebrate community cats. If your local farm has a couple of working cats, that means that farm is helping participate in the safe deflation of the feral cat population. Don't shame a farm or business for using community cats. We're all doing the best we can to solve the problem that we have.

[sword-wielding-sapphic]

Well. I'm doing it

💥🙌👏

[profoundlyfaded]

Let’s talk about Emmrich, specifically let’s talk about flirting with him after he first joins the team because I’m seeing a lot of discourse expressing frustration that he appears unmoved by your attempts to gain his attention, except, he knows what your doing. He’s holding back and let’s explore why -

Taking a step back, let’s look at who Emmrich is in terms of that public facing persona:

A Professor, who actively teaches.

An expert in his field who is prolific enough that Bellara, a Dalish elf living in relative isolation, knows who he is.

He written books, Davrin talks about this.

He’s wealthy, wealthy enough that Harding mistakes him for nobility.

All these factors have likely won him a lot of attention. Emmrich tells you in the romantic interest scene with the skull that if your interest ‘goes beyond charming flattery’ then he’s interested in exploring that as well.

This line tells me that flirting with him, at least at the start, is something he considers transactional. He gets it a lot when people around him might try and charm him for various reasons; could be students looking for better grades, or others studying his field of expertise attempting to gain recognition from him, even, perhaps, the odd person who might view Emmrich as a possible sugar daddy (you’re all thinking it).

So, Rook rocks up, shows interest in him and he’s seen it all before - until Emmrich realises that Rook means it, the interest is genuine, no subterfuge. We see that through the gradual reciprocation of flirting; that soft line about picking extraordinary moments for compliments, the relaxing into the flirtation during the first visit after bringing out tea, showing you his magic.

He knows you’re flirting, he’s just making sure it’s genuine first.

[leikeliscomet]

Asexual theory 101

Right I keep getting asked on most of my asexual posts 'What does this mean OP? Where's the sources?' so imma make a quick ace theory 101 post so if anyone says they don't get it I can say I tried. Let's go:

'What does being ace have to do with race/racism?/There's racism in the ace community???'

Pretty much everything as people of colour experience various forms of sexualisation and desexualisation at the same time, which is why POC are rarely included in asexual representation:

Asexuals of Color Still Seek to Validate Their Asexuality by Ebony Purks

Stereotypes & media about Black masculinity made it harder to come out as asexual by Tyger Songbird

Your Assumptions About Black Queer Masculinity Are Erasing My Asexual Identity by Timinepre Cole

It's Time To Start Celebrating Black Asexuality in Media By Tyger Songbird

Yasmin Benoit: ‘People had a hard time believing that I could be Black and asexual and at Pride’ by Alastair James

Brown and Gray: An Asexual People of Color Zine

'What do TERFS/transphobia have to do with asexuality?'

There's a growing TERF conspiracy theory that asexuality is the side-effect of transitioning. The LGB movement believes the community is exclusively for 'same-sex attracted persons' and so identities that don't involve attraction e.g. the TQIA should be removed. Most backlash towards Yasmin Benoit, aroace activist, is from white TERFs and conservatives:

Acephobic conspiracy theories have transphobic and fascist roots by Sherronda J Brown

Anti-trans movement has a new target: The asexual community by Yasmin Benoit

'But how can conservatives hate asexuality if they hate sex?'

Because they don't and never did. If the term 'puritan' was used correctly in modern internet discourse, it would be known Christian puritans believe heterosexual sex for reproduction is a gift from god and mandatory so being asexual doesn't exactly fit with that worldview. Their beef is with any form of sex and sexuality that falls outside of cis heterosexual marriage, including asexuality. They're not anti sex but anti sexual autonomy:

"Anti-Sex" and the Real Sexual Politics of the Right by Lee Cicuta (ButchAnarchy)

The religious right is now targeting sexless marriages as “selfishness.” They Want to Ban Those Too by Tyger Songbird

Asexual people targetted by right-wing pundits following landmark report by Harriet Brewis

'What does being ace have to do with gender?'

It's commonly assumed that because patriarchy shames women's sexualities and considers all men's sexuality as biological and unavoidable, that ace women only and exclusively experience desexualisation whilst ace men only and exclusively are pressured into being sexual beings. This can true as a broad overview but it can vary based on race, disability, class etc. This also becomes complex for asexuals that exist outside the gender binary. This is known as 'gender detachment'.

Impossible for Men, Unremarkable for Women by Canton Winer

My Work on Gender Detachment and Asexuality Strikes a Nerve by Canton Winer

'There's asexual studies now?'

Yup. On the general experiences of asexual people in the UK, including discrimination in education, the workplace and healthcare:

The National LGBT Survey (2018)

Ace in the UK Report (2023)

Asexuality in the UK: Public attitudes towards people who experience little to no sexual attraction (2025)

Specific names:

Asexual theorists: Ianna Hawkins Owen, Michael Paramo, Julia Sondra Decker, Canton Winer (non-ace), Sherronda J Brown, Angela Chen

Asexual activists: Yasmin Benoit, Tyger Songbird, Marshall Blount (TheGentleAce)

Asexual artists: Kimberly Butler (TheAsexualGoddess)

And I'm gonna update this with more if they're worth adding. I don't wanna hear any excuses anymore or blame towards aces of colour, gay aces or trans aces for not being specific enough anymore. Read!

[tanadrin]

This essay cites some actual poli sci research to back up what I've been saying (much more poorly) about the limits and failures of popularism as a campaign strategy--"what is popular" does not exist out in the world for campaign consultants and pollsters to discovery organically, but is part of a process of feedback that involves (indeed, requires) parties and politicians to stake out positions first, rather than being simply reactive to what polls well.

In the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, one of the big issues was Social Security privatization. Bush wanted to (partially) privatize, Gore didn’t. Political scientist Gabriel Lenz looked at survey data gathered from voters both early in the election cycle and then again right before the election. He found that initially, there was little correlation between voters’ positions on Social Security privatization and their choice of candidate. By the time the election rolled around, however, the voters had seemingly sorted themselves: people who supported privatization tended to support Bush, and people who opposed it supported Gore. You might think this makes sense: people saw what the candidates stood for, and then aligned with the candidate who matched their position. But that’s not what happened. The surveys showed that the voters’ choice of candidates generally hadn’t changed. Instead, they had changed their position on Social Security privatization to match their chosen candidate. Not only that, but almost no voters changed their preferred candidate based on the issue. The voters weren’t switching candidates based on their policy positions, they were switching policy positions based on their candidate.

There are countless studies reaching similar conclusions. “Party cues,” as political scientists call them, are powerful things. It’s been found that party cues have lasting effects, and in some cases can even overcome voters’ own self-interest. Lenz wrote a book on the subject where he compiled and analyzed much of the existing research. He concluded that “instead of politicians following voters on policy, voters appear to follow politicians.” This idea has its limitations: research shows that the ability of political leaders to influence voters is minimal in some circumstances. When issues are already salient and opinions have hardened, the ability of party leaders to drive opinion wanes. A candidate is not likely to change an affordable housing expert’s position on affordable housing. But for an issue like trans rights, which has only come to the center of the public’s attention recently, voters are highly moveable.

Reactive moves to try to capture voters by tacking toward the perceived center on an issue (like almost every party moving right on immigration here in Germany, or Democrats tacking right on trans rights in the US, and so forth) are never going to be as successful as they "should" be if you assume voter policy preference exists before and independent of larger political discourse.

[wiliecoyotegenius]

Oh that final comment is also said in the very influential Draula paper by Spencer:

"Nor can they read this scene only as sadistic rape –the key to recognizing the appeal of the vampire rests in exactly the myth's own terms: the vampire is about seduction and intent, not force and rape. Mina is actively participating, and reluctantly admits her own complicity: “strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him” (...) Dracula has drained not only her blood, but also her will to resist. He is, in sexual terms, more seducer than rapist."

Warning, never read an Annotated Dracula if you don't want to see THE most painful commentary known to man by Experts like the annotations on Oct 3 saying things like "So what is in actuality going on here? A forbidden menage de trois caught in the act? Interrupted infidelity and an attempt to cover it up?" "As Mina admits, she did not resist, making him more of a seducer than a rapist" etc

OH MY GOD?? I’m not surprised but still disgusted Jesus Christ.

I’m all for differing interpretations and open discussion and stuff, but if you can read that scene, in October 3rd, in Dracula, for the first time, and NOT feel disturbed, and see it sexually? Something is genuinely fucking seriously wrong with you.

I genuinely despise the hypersexualisation of women in analysis of gothic literature it makes me want to fucking kill myself

I moved forward to Mrs Harker, who by this time had drawn her breath and with it had given a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so despairing that it seems to me now that it will ring in my ears till my dying day. For a few seconds she lay in her helpless attitude and disarray. Her face was ghastly, with a pallor which was accentuated by the blood which smeared her lips and cheeks and chin; from her throat trickled a thin stream of blood. Her eyes were mad with terror. Then she put before her face her poor crushed hands, which bore on their whiteness the red mark of the Count's terrible grip, and from behind them came a low desolate wail which made the terrible scream seem only the quick expression of an endless grief.

Yeah, sounds like she wanted it.

[fatehbaz]

Posted about British colonial officials in 1860s South India being fascinated by studying geology of Deccan Plateau as both a potential source of material wealth but also as more like intellectual curiosity that allowed them to consider "deep time" and the place of "civilization" in history. And someone shared post, commenting in tags something sort of like "interesting how British Empire could be so focused on rocks."

And really:

Both British imperial power and British popular imagination are tied to "ancient rocks"

British coal and coal-powered engines transformed global ecologies and societies with railroads and factories at the same time that British public became widely aware of dinosaurs, extinct Pleistocene megafauna, the vast scale of deep time, geology, and uniformitarian Earth systems. Then British anthropology, Egyptomania, archaeology, etc., were implicated in professionalization of sciences and ideas of primitivsm/racial hierarchy. Then British extraction of liquid fossil fuels instantiated expansion of petroleum products. Victorian popular culture had a penchant for contemplating death, decay, deep past, civilizational collapse, classical antiquity. So there's a simultaneous fixation on both temporality and materiality. Which both involve "earth."

-

Consider:

Coal. How the mining of "ancient rock" (300-million-year-old Carboniferous) and coal-burning probably strongly propelled Britain (tied also to enclosure laws and Caribbean slave profits reinvested in ascendant financial/insurance institutions) to the "first" industrialization around 1830, helping cement its global hegemony and setting a blueprint for European/US industry. How burning that ancient rock "unlocked steam power" for Britain and facilitated the rapid expansion of railroad networks after the first public steam railway in 1825 (steam engines then let Britain reach and extract resources from hinterlands) while the rock also powered textile mills after the 1830s (putting poorer Britons to work in mills and factories while "Poor Laws" were put into effect outlawing "vagrancy" and "joblessness") which reshaped "the countryside" in Britain and reshaped global ecologies and labor regimes. Provincial realist novels and other literature reflect anxiety about this ecological/social transition. Even later Victorian novels and fin de siecle commentaries hint how coal and industrialization invoke temporality more directly, in that the engines and technologies provoke rhetoric and discourses about exponential growth, linear progress, and dazzling future horizons.

Fossils of Pleistocene megafauna: How an extinct Mastodon was displayed at Pall Mall in London in 1802. And how William Conybeare's discovery/description of coal-bearing rock in Britain led him to name "the Carboniferous period" in 1822, but it wasn't just coal power that this event inspired. in the very same year, Conybeare described the remains of extinct Pleistocene hyenas at Kirkdale Cave in Britain. The promotion of this discovery of Ice Age hyenas gave many Britons for the first time an awareness of deep past and obsession with Creatures. But the promotion also brought spectacle, public display, poetics, and marketing into natural history like "edu-tainment," a "poetics of popular science." This took place in the context of the rapid rise of British mass-market print media. Geological verse, Victorian novels, and cheap miscellanies reflect anxiety about this temporality and natural history.

Geology as a discipline: How the 1830 publishing of Lyell's monumentally significant Principles of Geology, directly inspired after he observed British ancient rock formations at Isle of Arran, completely changed European/US understanding of deep time and geology and the scale of Earth systems (uniformity principle), which made people wonder about linear notions of history and whether empires/societies can survive forever in such vast time scales.

Dinosaur fossils: How the "first dinosaur sculptures in the world" (dinosaur fossils reminiscent of ancient rock?) were reconstructed and put on display by Britain in 1854 at Crystal Palace in London following "the Great Exhibition," an event which set the model for future exhibitions and started the global craze for "world's fairs" and expositions showcasing imperial/industrial power for decades (the model for Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893, Paris event of 1900, St. Louis event of 1904, and beyond).

Soil mapping: How "ancient rock" was entangled with one of the most significant scientific projects of all-time, Britain's "The Great Trigonometric Survey of India" in 1802, undertaken to survey and record soil types across South Asia. After the resistance of the leaders of Mysore had finally been defeated, the subcontinent was vulnerable to consolidated British colonial power, and surveys were ordered immediately. The mapping of acreage for tax administration by the East India Company would remake societies with bordered property, contracted ownership, tax/wealth extraction. But the Survey also let Britain map soil for purposes of monoculture agriculture planning. Britain then used geology/soil as potential indicators of biological essentialism that equated "ancient" Gonds of India or "ancient" Aboriginal peoples of Australia with primitivism. Adventure stories and sportsmen's pulp magazines reflect anxiety about these cultural and geographical frontiers.

Diamonds: How the discovery of ancient rock (diamonds, from tens of millions of years old kimberlite) in the Kimberly (South Africa) rocketed Britain to more power when their colonial commissioners took possession in 1871, giving Britain a foothold and paving the way for Cecil Rhodes to amass astonishing wealth while completely remaking social institutions, labor regimes, and environments in southern Africa, giving Britain so much profit from diamonds that in 1882 Kimberly was only the second city on the whole planet to install electric street lighting.

Egyptomania: How British archaeologists digging around in ancient rock of their vassal/colony of Egypt, especially the tens of thousands of ancient Egyptian artifacts that they collected between 1880 and 1890, contributed to a craze for classical antiquity and a fixation on the ancient Mediterranean and mummies.

Victorian death fascination: How British archaeologists interacting with ancient rock in Southwest Asia (Mesopotamia, Levant) coupled with the Egyptomania also strongly influenced Late Victorian obsessions with death, decay, the occult, millennarian dates, and civilizational collapse which continued to influence culture, fashion, historicity, and narrativizing in Europe/US for years. Perhaps they wondered: "If Ur could fall, if Thebes could fall, if Mycenae could fall, if ROME could fall, then how could our civilization based in fair London survive such vast eons of time and such strong geological and environmental forces?"

Liquid fossil fuels: How "ancient rock" yielded liquid fossil that was extracted by British industrialsits when the first test oil wells were dug at "the Black Spot" in Borneo in 1896 which led to creation of Shell Oil company in 1897 led by a British director who was fascinated with ancient fossils. Followed then the global expansion of combustion engines, oil lubricants, and networks of imperial infrastructure to extract and refine oil. And how British tinkering with "ancient rock" of Persia and Southwest Asia led to the bolstering of a "Middle East" oil industry; the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was founded in 1909, giving Britain yet more geopolitical leverage in the region; the company would later become BP, one of the biggest and most profitable corporations to ever exist.

-

So the immaterial imaginaries of place/space and time (frontiers, the exotic/foreign, the tropical/Orient, ascent/decay, civilization/savagery, deep past/future horizons) justify or organize or pre-empt or service the material dispossession and accumulation.

British Empire transformed Earth and earth. Both materially/physically and immaterially/imaginatively.

[starweaversguidetothehazbinhotel]

I think of this meme often when I stumble across Hazbin shipping discourse and hate.

Say what you want about the Dr Who/Sherlock/Potter Heads era of tumblr. Was it cringe? Yes. Unbelievably so. But the art and community that came from it was amazing.

The way the HH fandom tears into each other over ships that aren’t “canon” is.. baffling to me.

Maybe I’m just too old to understand it. But it all feels so childish. Life is hard and has too many real problems. I don’t see the appeal in fighting over who imaginary characters do/do not sleep with.

I’ve seen this a lot with Alastor’s character specifically. Ace/Aro authors and artist create something based off of their own personal experiences- and get railroaded by other fans- simply because he’s portrayed in a way that doesn’t fit into their personal biases.

Hazbin fans- just because your favorite character is LGBTA doesn’t make you immune to bigoted behavior. Prejudice often disguises itself as public-interest.

Let people be fun. Let them be cringe. Let them make crack and terrible art. AUs, character studies, and crossovers can be the birthplace of amazing things.

I don’t really have a point with all of this. I just think it’s kinda sad how fans are ruining the show for themselves.