bobofsuburbia - Tumblr blog

[bobofsuburbia]

#fuck yeah check out those gigantic jets

Gigantic Jets

Stormy skies feature much more than the forked cloud-to-ground lightning we’re used to seeing. This composite image shows a rare and recently-recognized type of lightning known as a gigantic jets. (Image credit: Li X.; via APOD) Read the full article

[bobofsuburbia]

Hegemony and Me: an American tale

god bless America, land of the brave and home of the free established by white men for white men on the backs of Africans and Chinese on the graves of its Indigenous people on the theft of goods from Central and South America polished white marble build up its capital where monuments sit bare like bones in the soil asking you to forget the many little deaths that had to happen to turn that graveyard into a garden the many tiny factory hands that make our clothes and electronics the death squads burning villages from human memory the prisoners generating wealth for the Fortune 500 there's a candy coating on all of it sweet and serene dulling the senses red white and blue sugar dipped conquest a military hegemony of 32 scoopable flavors a cruise missile needs to go into a school somewhere around the world in order for you to feel safe here at home here in America, god bless it, where children are killed at school by their peers wonder where they learned that violence solves problems? maybe it was the million dead Iraqis, or the million dead Cambodians? maybe it was the twin rising suns over Japan? or the two decades in the mountains of Afghanistan? or maybe it was the piles of dead bison? or the poisoned waters of Alaska and Michigan? maybe it was the freeways built through Black neighborhoods? maybe it was the segregated bathrooms or the dudes in white hoods? maybe it was all of it together a cocktail of coercion and culling gnawing you out from the inside so that you can gorge yourself at the table of fruit always in season corn as big as your arm and chickens so plump their legs break underneath them where the drinks only taste a little like copper and the smell of the bodies only wafts over on really windy days

[bobofsuburbia]

Exotic ship

[bobofsuburbia]

[bobofsuburbia]

[bobofsuburbia]

'The Hills', one of the limited-edition prints available in my shop: www.tomgauld.com/shop

[bobofsuburbia]

🕷️KENVA🕷️

[bobofsuburbia]

Why does the body and mind conspire against each other? It's like they have a long and complicated political history that is based on centuries of conflict, but it's been decades since the last shot and tensions get high over the smallest events. The body reasons with the mind, 'this is a trauma response and I do it to protect you!' The mind responds, 'but I don't need you to do it anytime something comes up!' The body slams the desk and says, 'It worked in the past!'

It goes back and forth, governing body to governing body, each drunk with power and oblivious to the fact they are each halves to a whole. My mind races, my body paces. They each want different things at the same time, and I shut down while they bicker.

Some days, it's just a small firefight, a border skirmish that pops up and goes away without gathering momentum. But some days, fighter jets are in the air and troops are called back to base just waiting for one side to flinch first.

I'm so worried that whatever pain is inherent in me is not just a bug of my existence, but a feature of my genetics. I am terrified that my daughter is going to wake up one day afraid of her own death and angry at her parents for making her exist, like me at age 7. And In 40 years, when she's my age now, and I'm likely gone, will she still have the same worries and fears that live in me now? Will she be able to sleep at night without anxiety keeping her up and wake up without guilt keeping her in bed?

Will the smallest things trigger her and remind her of a trauma I didn't protect her against when *she* is 7?

Will I be a good parent? Will she want to talk to me when she grows up? Will she be depressed like me? Will she ever want to die?

All the things I can't control revolt against me from within, and the two halves of me can't find a path to de-escalation. I feel it rise in my stomach and the mind follows. Or does it start subliminally in the mind and only come to my attention when my stomach turns inward and my heart paces?

There is a war in my heart and I don't want my daughter to inherit it.

[bobofsuburbia]

The sleeper has awakened

[bobofsuburbia]

I have been thinking of this particular shot and Hans Zimmer's score vibrating the theater underneath it since the *first* time I watched the movie. It's already imprinted itself onto my brain.

fucked up reverse wedding iconography jessica waiting at the altar she built with her own hands to martyr her son upon! paul walking towards her clothed in white(ish) walking towards his own destruction and resurrection as something other.

[bobofsuburbia]

So there is this thing that the two Villeneuve Dune movies do together that I cannot stop thinking about, where they will present something (often, a weapon) in a context the first time around where it looks a certain way (often, very sexy and cool). And then they will present it again in a way that doesn't exactly negate your reading of the original context but makes you recoil in horror from the new context.

Paul and Jessica using the Voice to escape from their Harkonnen captors? Very sexy and cool. Look at them working together, mother and son, a couple of space witch badasses.

Jessica using the Voice on Chani to force her to participate in reviving Paul after he drinks the Water of Life? Horrifying. Saying you will be part of this myth that has been created to serve political ends that have nothing to do with your liberation, and if you don't do it voluntarily to save the person you love then I will make you do it.

Chani and Paul working together to take down the ornithopter gunship using those little shoulder-fired rockets? Very sexy and cool, we love guerrilla warfare against an occupying army. (I'm not being facetious here, this sequence is extremely satisfying to watch.)

The much later image of Paul silhouetted against the blast from the missiles from his family's private nuclear arsenal blowing up the shield wall? Nightmarish.

The way the climactic battle to retake the palace at Arrakeen extends into the night so that it begins to look very very much like the initial Harkonnen attack on the same place? I'm sure this is intentional; the whole third act is about taking a giant sledgehammer to the idea that the Atreides are the better or more civilized imperialists.

Perhaps my favorite example of this is the Atreides signet ring. When Paul first puts it on in the first movie, it's a symbol of him accepting that Leto is dead. It's a melancholy moment, but it's also a sign of Paul accepting the responsibility of his birthright as the new Duke.

Early in the second movie, when he is trying to be equal to the Fremen, he takes the ring off. And you just know that when he decides to put it back on again, that will be the sign that everything's about to go to shit. And when it happens it's a very similar moment--it is Paul accepting his birthright, just a different kind. But the accompanying feeling is oh no.

[bobofsuburbia]

[bobofsuburbia]

[bobofsuburbia]

Title Screens

[bobofsuburbia]

Our descendants are going to look at our social media footprints the way we look at cave drawings.

That is, if we survive the Great Filter and don't nuke the whole Digital Archive first.

[bobofsuburbia]

"The YouTuber patriarch of a right-wing Canadian family, Arend Feenstra, decided that he’d had just about enough of the gay people existing in his country. So he decided to take his family to Russia instead.

“We didn’t feel safe for our children there in the future anymore,” said avowedly Christian dad of eight Arend Feenstra on Russian state TV. “There’s a lot of left-wing ideology, LGBTQ+, trans, just a lot of things that we don’t agree with that they teach there now, and we wanted to get away from that for our children.”

...

Would it have been a good idea for them to learn Russian before they went? Yes, yes it would. Did they do that? No, they did not. “We were naive on that,” said Anneesa Feenstra, matriarch and former beet farmer. “I needed to use the washroom, and on the doors said male and female, but I didn’t know which was which!”

...

In a YouTube episode titled “our first week in Russia”, Arend Feenstra showcases the hospitality that the local people living in their district had shown to the clueless family, who hadn’t brought enough cold-weather clothes. The locals donated snow suits for the children, and even helped them with their language issues.

...

Unfortunately, no amount of kindness from strangers can make up for significant financial problems: something the Feenstras encountered because – who knew?! – Visa or MasterCard don’t work there, and authorities closed the Russian account they moved their money to due to it being a suspiciously high sum with no explanation of where it came from. Similar anti-money laundering laws exist in the UK and US.

Arguing for their money proved incredibly challenging since Russia doesn’t require any bank, or any business, to hire English translators.

This caused a fairly significant tantrum, posted on YouTube by Anneesa Feenstra and then deleted. “I’m very disappointed in this country at this point,” she said – about a snag that could have easily been solved in advance with a quick Google search. “I’m ready to jump on a plane and get out of here”."

Read the full article here: https://t.co/t1b3Y7xFce

[bobofsuburbia]