#fz_thinkingoutloud

[ferdifz]

February 2025 drawing-theme ideas

Some drawing theme ideas I've gathered this February 2025 (personal notes):

Resisting is still on the agenda

Do not fear the Nazis. You do not have to punch them per se, but you do not have to obey their every threat either.

The Nazis are still wrong and stupid

The ants voting for insecticides and killing everyone (see the Portuguese ant-voting meme...)

Keep moving and breathing and mutual-supporting

Vaccines still save many many lives and still essentially don't cause autism.

the Proud Boys lost the copyright to their name & branding. (See this Associated Press report from Feb 6, 2025)

There is hope, and there is no need to preemptively shrivel up & die.

[ferdifz]

The thing about the kind of person who encounters something they can't seem to understand, then they just flat out refuses to even try to understand, and then proceeds to immediately declare the thing they can't understand as ugly...

Yeah...

[/Proceeds to eat a banana that had just been duct-taped to a wall.]

[hoergen]

♲ Ferdi F. Zebua 🌏 (FerdiZ@mastodon.cloud) 2020-01-20 23:27:41:

Yes we live in societies where we live as neighbors with each other, in social contract, our day-to-day governed by written legal-formal laws, and as well as other semi-formal and non-formal presumably collectively agreed upon community norms. Facts remain though. (Memepic copied to/from FB/Twitter/Tumblr/etc.) #fz_thinkingOutLoud #Politics #Philosophy #Sociology #Morality

[ferdifz]

Update, post-Nov. 6th, 2024: Damn it America. -_-"

———

Dear Americans hoping for a Kamala-Tim Waltz win: it's not over yet. Get out the vote.

Also please consider voting all the way up and down the ballot, a bad-faith obstuctionist congress will still ruin your days (and years) even if Harris-Waltz win.

End Trumpism. You've had enough of that nightmare. The World has had enough of that nightmare. No we don't want it to become more Nightmare on Elm Street nor more The Purge.

(To completely skip all the too obvious but also too brain-numbing comparisons to the populist-racist rise, in the past, of a particular Third Reich.)

cartoon self-work from 2017

_____

...And yeah, even if Trumpism were ended in 2024, there will still be plenty of work left still to do to end nihilism, to end stochastic insurrectionism, to end political White Supremacy, to end corporate-capital capture... and so, so much more. But right now, on the plate, is one pitch to at least maybe possibly end just one scammy play: Trumpism.

[ferdifz]

They say with all the votes counted & verified as of this moment, there's only like a 6% chance that Harris-Walz will be the winning ticket tonight.

I personally hate hanging onto such a slim chance for hope.

Sucks. /sigh/

I may tag this Tumblr post "#USPol" some day in the future. Maybe next week, or maybe in a couple of months. But not tonight though, no.

Also forevermore: Fuck Trump.

___

Addendum: I love the part of Harris' concession speech where she says she "Concedes the election, but I do not Concede the Fight that underlies this campaign."

The fight is not over. If anything it's getting way harder. And this is no time to give up and die. Literally, no. Not the time.

[ferdifz]

I watched Flow last night. Watching the opening scene, I can't help that someone really, really loved the cat. Before they died/disappeared/was raptured away...

9 HD posters of "Flow", the magnificent 2nd feature film by Gints Zilbalodis.

[ferdifz]

Rebel Moon part II: The Scargiver (a "mini-review")

I am so, so glad that I personally enjoyed "Rebel Moon part II: The Scargiver" a whole lot more than some of the pre-release reviewers would believe (or even perhaps wish) me to. I found myself moved, frankly, by the story. No it's no Tolstoy "War & Peace", but it's no knock-off "Flash Gordon" either.

...And yes you do have to have a "supportive" viewing attitude going in; you need suspension of disbelief (and, perhaps moreso, "suspension of disapproval"). There are premises that are so, so easy to sarcastically criticize in Rebel Moon, but doing so will rob yourself as certainly as going into a Superman movie telling yourself, "humans don't fly & aliens aren't bulletproof".

You get out of it what you put into it. You want to hate Rebel Moon and call it dumb, go ahead hate it. It is a free world. I myself choose not to hate it.

If you ask me (and if you're not asking me then why are you even reading this?), you should go into Rebel Moon telling yourself, "I am going to try, just ever so slightly, not to hate this as I'm going in". I would say there is a good chance you might enjoy it, if you want to, like I did.

--===--

The pushback against Rebel Moon feels very similar to the pushback against Star Wars episodes I through III (the Star Wars prequel trilogy), to me.

...And no I will not be accepting any debates on this topic at this time.

[/continues wallowing in blissful ignorance]

[ferdifz]

Pro-tip (especially for the chronically online, myself included):

Before unlocking your phone or turning on your laptop, write down:

on a piece of paper,

using a ballpoint-pen or a pencil,

(And yes, these two things are very important) what you want to do on the phone or on the laptop.

…Because believe you me, the moment your laptop is on and/or your phone's home screen is in front of you, you have completely forgotten what you had wanted to do in the first place.

___

[ferdifz]

Personal Psychosis and the Principal Skinner problem

Know Your Meme: the Simpsons cartoon Principal Skinner 'Am I Out of Touch' meme

The problem with psychosis is when you are the one deep in a psychotic episode, it always feels like it's the whole World that's psychotic, and you're the only sane person.

(...instead of the other way around that may, or may not, be the objective reality.)

…And the double-trouble with that is, it is not always readily apparent whether it's you that's wrong or it's the whole World that's wrong.

Like that time that some people in the 18th century came up with the notion that slavery is wrong, or that women should vote, and that time someone vehemently started opposing the notion that the color of your skin absolutely predetermines your value & possible contribution to Human History.

Is it you that's insane, or is the whole World insane?

And sometimes, porque no los dos.

[ferdifz]

"It is better to have money than to save money" — and a darkness behind that thought

A stray thought that I do not 100% support nor stand behind, necessarily:

It is better to have money than to spend money. Because if you spend money now on things you don't really need, in the future when you need to spend money you don't have for things you can't live without, you will be in a world of hurt & regret for not saving up that money. Yes this is a scarcity mindset. But it is the world that the rich billionaires and the haves have set-up in their fear & greed to hoard all the powers and riches. And one day the poor will eat them alive. We will eat the rich, and that is why the rich fear for their lives.

It is a dark thought and I do not like it. ...And yet I do not want to forget these ideas or feelings completely; I feel I need to learn more from them... Learn what exactly, I don't quite really know just yet...

[ferdifz]

Is Meritocracy a praise, or an insult..?

Lashback against meritocracy or elitism...

(...or class inequality in general?)

[ferdifz]

Ea-Nasir is "back"...

Hey guys, remember the ancient Mesopotamian low-quality copper bamboozler Ea-Nasir? Guess what: he seems to be "back"...

...To be fair though: This particular embezzlement crime actually happened in 2021: [mining.com] Not this year (2024).

(Using a news-link from mining dot com, because the original Bloomberg dot com article is behind a pay-wall.)

Still hillarious though, in my opinion. And the Ea Nasir joke continues to be evergreen. At least among Tumblr deep-lore enthusiasts and fans of ancient world/mediterranean/levant history.

--===--

Some more choice memes I've collected recently, related to Ea Nasir:

A reply, over from Bluesky:

Ea-nāṣir jokes are like high-quality copper ingots. Not everybody gets them.

Not mine; this next one neither:

Obligatory "Palpatine is back" remix:

The Simpsons predicted this, of course:

---

Caught by the captains of the East India Company:

---

Randal Munroe/XKCD Comics remembers Ea-Nasir, of course...

The Tumblr merch shop [shop.tumblr.com] has been under maintenance and reconstruction for several months now, but the (current? former?) head of Tumblr merch still has his Tumblr blog up and has a nice quick-briefing of the Ea-Nasir meme on Tumblr....

In 1953, explorer Sir Leonard Woolley discovered and acquired the tablet from what is believed to be the ruins of Ea-Nasir's home while on an expedition to the city of Ur. Several other similar tablets complaining about poor copper quality were also recovered, suggesting Ea-Nasir frequently sent his customers poor-quality goods. The tablet is currently held at the British Museum.

[ferdifz]

Spaceman (2024, March; Netflix)

Why does Hanuš the space-spider never call Jakub the Czech cosmonaut, Jakub? And Hanuš instead keeps calling Jakub "skinny man"? I don't protest this about the movie. No, I think I love it.

Also I love how all the dialogue feels translated. As if it's not natively written in English. The post-neo-Soviet vibe, it fits the narrative so well.

In fact I think I'd love watching the movie with Czech audio and English subtitles. I wonder if that's possible... I suppose it's subtle but it would require me hunting for the Czech audio, which I'm 99% sure exists.

I also love the movie's subtext-dialogue about the notions of love, relationship, loneliness, attachment, self-centeredness, touch, beginning & end, cosmology, and so on and so forth.

So much to think about. It's like, I myself had to watch this in a couple of sittings, and I just had to watch it like two, three times to catch what I want to catch out of it...

Spaceman (2024 movie) at Wikipedia

[ferdifz]

Some drawing ideas:

Drawing idea: Getting through one thick skull at a time

Drawing idea: Extending grace even to those whom we deeply disagree with

Drawing idea: Conceding the election, but not conceding the underlying fight (yes this one's a quote from Kamala's concesion speech)

[ferdifz]

Love is hard. Especially when everything and everyone around you is in pain (whether great pain or just a constant, humming background pain), and everyone is hiding and/or suppressing it to various degrees, ready to explode at any moment.

[ferdifz]

Fuck Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I peeked into Twitter and Elon's X keeps telling me to vote for RFK Jr., lol x")) Fuck that antivaxxer conspiracy-grifter. As I've said before, I personally think Ms Harris is still a great choice though.

(Much, much better than a convicted felon and wannabe autocrat, anyway.)

For one I am glad the DNC chose to nominate someone other than a half-an-onion in a plastic bag.

(Though yeah, as I've said before, if I had to & if I could, I would've voted for the onion anyway, too.)

Anyways, while you still legally can: Vote.