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Now watching: History Is Made at Night (1937)

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History Is Made at Night (1937) Frank Borzage

July 10th 2023

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what’s your most unhinged old Hollywood take

jean arthur built her career on movies that feel like fanfic premises

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“Children don’t need to earn their humanity. Children aren’t humans in training, they are humans right now. They’re not waiting to live their life, this is part of their life in this moment. Society treats children as though they’re preparing for a time where they’re allowed respect – and not before then. Until that time it’s acceptable to treat them as sub-human under the guise of parenting and education. For many, parenting is synonymous with punishment and learning is synonymous with schooling which are both so far off the mark. This all comes down to childism and it is so deeply sewn into the fabric our society. So much so that talking about it creates such cognitive dissonance that I know I’ll get defensive, even angry comments sharing these thoughts. People who genuinely respectfully parent and speak up for the injustices towards kids are so often ridiculed. Like I’ve said in the past, I don’t want to be viewed as a ‘good parent’ by a society that thinks so little of children.”

— How Many Well Intentioned People Dehumanise Children | Racheous

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Want to do something to help stop the tradwife pipeline btw? Include mothers in your feminism. Hold space for women and others who are experiencing pregnancy or motherhood. Listen to their concerns about and unique perspectives on things like universal childcare, bodily autonomy, healthcare. Hold men who disrespect, sexualize, fetishize, shame or harass pregnant women and mothers accountable. Advocate for the right to nurse in public. Advocate for bodily autonomy within the healthcare field. Listen to women and birthing parents who have birth trauma. Listen to women who have undergone things like “the husband stitch”, or medically unnecessary c-sections, or who were given drugs without consent by doctors and nurses violating their birth plan. Advocate for resources to promote an end to the high rates of maternal mortality in the US. Get to know a woman who has children. Get to know the person she is. Know about her likes and interests and hobbies. Unlearn the stigma in your head which makes you see pregnant women as “ruined” or “tainted” and mothers as devoid of individual personhood.

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Little Shop of Horrors is so much funnier when you know that Alan Menken came from a family of dentists.

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Primus St. John, "Sunday"

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I know that some British people take umbridge at Americans calling the Great British Bake Off relaxing, but it's just because GBBO is such a different kind of stressful from American baking shows.

American baking shows will be called something like "Cupcake Knife Fight", there's horror movie lighting everywhere and dramatic stings every 5 seconds. All of the contestants are shit talking each other and fist fighting over the one single deep fryer provided by production. It will show the judges all whispering to each other at their super villain table overlooking the whole kitchen, and one will be like, "Oh my god. Everyone look at Brenda right now. She's straight tanking it." And it will cut to Brenda, who is running around covered in flour and crying and also bleeding for some reason. Then you get a clip from an interview with one of the contestants, and they're like, "I really need to win this. Without this award money, I'm gonna need to close my restaurant, sell my dad, and live out of my car. AGAIN." Then the giant digital doomsday clock overhead lets out a horrid klaxon, the judges tell half of them that their cupcakes taste disgusting, and one of them gets eliminated and sent to walk down the dramatically-lit shame hallway never to be seen again.

Meanwhile GBBO is in a lovely, brightly colored tent, there are delightful and friendly hosts/jesters there to keep everyone entertained, and all of the B Roll is of like... a bumblebee going into a flower, or a lamb running in a field. And yes, there will be moments where someone will mess up their timing or something, and they'll be looking at their bake through the oven door like, "oh gosh I don't think this will rise in time!" Then they stand up to find Paul Hollywood directly behind them ominously. His creepy whitewalker eyes will glow white, and he'll say something like "the 12th of June. 2035. Drowning." And his eyes will go back to normal and he'll walk away. Then the baker gives a playful grimace to the camera and says "that didnt sound great, did it?". Cut to a sweet looking older woman sipping tea on a stool and she says "oo I do hope that Prue enjoys the taste of my sugary, sticky baps!". Then, at the end, someone gets a gold star for doing good, and the loser of the episode gets in the middle of a giant group hug. You see all of them at the end of the series at a giant carnival with their families and the post credits informs you that all of the contestants have become a Partridge Family-style traveling band and stayed friends forever.

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now feels like a good time to reiterate that Iranians have been martyred by america + israel already, both empires that possess nuclear weapons, and that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. so now is not the time to joke about america getting nuked-- any retaliation on Iran's part is justified and the only way we escape this situation, but Iran is not going to nuke us, because the entire premise that Iran has nukes is how america justified bombing them and also the exact same rhetoric we used against Iraq and how we killed my countrysmen when there was again no evidence of nuclear warfare. New York City is not going to get fucking nuked. go listen to a podcast or something

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i don’t know how to explain to you people that no matter what a country’s government is like i do not and will not support the US indiscriminately bombing that country’s civilians and i don’t know why that’s a controversial take tbh

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The Vietnam War was wrong and cruel

The Iraq War was wrong and creul

And this war shall be shown by history to have been wrong and cruel as well

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Erm...

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i kind of feel like if you take "don't bomb iran" as an endorsement of the iranian government, you're not intellectually ready to engage in conversations about real-world politics. Go talk about steven's universe instead

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I'm reading this history book about Victorian Era gay sailors (Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail) and one chapter is about sailors' tattoos, and specifically ones that can be interpreted now, or were understood then, as queer tattoos. A lot of the tattoos described in the book are filthy, absolutely meant to be seen, interpreted, and enjoyed in a sexual context (which i have included under the cut). But there's also some very sweet and romantic ones. The French Victorian criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne found a few themes among the queer criminals he researched:

"Two times the interlaced hands were surmounted by initials. Below 'Friendship Unites Hearts', hands holding a pansy, over and above were initials. Hands holding a dagger with the inscription 'To Life To Death.' Four times there were initials below a flaming heart or a pansy with the word 'Friendship.' Four times there was the name of the 'friend' written out entirely. In one case it was surmounted with a portrait."

And Unruly Desire's author found other sweet ones recorded in the US Navy's Enlistment Rendezvous records of tattoos of enlisting men from the 1800s:

"The only tattoo that appeared on the body of Richard Devine, a 25 year old former barber from Aberdeen, Maryland, was a flower on his right forearm above the unexpected name of 'Jose Peralta.' William Young, from Marine City, Michigan, was more straightforward; on his right forearm appeared the declaration: 'I love Wilkerson J. Perry.'"

and now onto the debauchery:

"Perhaps the most overtly homosexual tattoo of any recruit listed in the [US Naval Enlistment] Rendezvous records could be found on Charles D. Moore, a 23 year old former bricklayer from Indiana. Moore had the words "Ticket Office" tattooed on his lower back, with a drawing of a downward pointing arrow "directly above anus." The [Tattooing Among] Prostitutes and Perverts article describes a similar decoration, an American sailor had a tattooed arrow on his back, along the spine, pointing to the anus and an accompanying inscription that said "For Men Only." Another man [...] had on his buttocks two inscriptions: "Open All Night" and "Pay as You Enter."

It should be noted that despite the provocative and explicit advertisement for his proclivities that his "Ticket Office" tattoo presented to the recruiting officers, Charles D. Moore was welcomed into the United States Navy on 29 of December 1864." - Unruly Desires

The criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne also found queer tattoos on penises, including quite a few of boots, which the men told him were related to the French phrase "Je vais te mettre ma botte au..." (basically, 'I'm going to put my boot up your ass and fuck you with it.")

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"In Northern California, a Native American tribe is celebrating the return of ancestral lands in one of the largest such transfers in the nation’s history.

Through a Dept. of the Interior initiative aiming to bring indigenous knowledge back into land management, 76 square miles east of the central stretch of the Klamath River has been returned to the Yurok tribe.

Sandwiched between the newly-freed Klamath and forested hillsides of evergreens, redwoods, and cottonwoods, Blue Creek is considered the crown jewel of these lands, though if it were a jewel it wouldn’t be blue, it would be a giant colorless diamond, such is the clarity of the water.

Pictured: Blue Creek

It’s the most important cold-water tributary of the Klamath River, and critical habitat for coho and Chinook salmon. Fished and hunted on since time immemorial by the Yurok and their ancestors, the land was taken from them during the gold rush before eventually being bought by timber companies.

Barry McCovey Jr., director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, remembers slipping past gates and dodging security along Blue Creek just to fish up a steelhead, one of three game fish that populate the river and need it to spawn.

Profiled along with the efforts of his tribe to secure the land for themselves and their posterity, he spoke to AP about the experience of seeing plans, made a decade ago, come to fruition, and returning to the creek on which he formerly trespassed as a land and fisheries manager.

“To go from when I was a kid and 20 years ago even, from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands … is incredible,” he said.

Part of the agreement is that the Yurok Tribe would manage the land to a state of maximum health and resilience, and for that the tribe has big plans, including restoring native prairie, using fire to control understory growth, removing invasive species, restoring native fish habitat, and undoing decades of land-use changes from the logging industry in the form of culverts and logging roads.

“And maybe all that’s not going to be done in my lifetime,” said McCovey. “But that’s fine, because I’m not doing this for myself.”

The Yurok Tribe were recently at the center of the nation’s largest dam removal, a two decades-long campaign to remove a series of four hydroelectric dams along the Klamath River. Once the West Coast’s third-largest salmon run, the Klamath dams substantially reduced salmon activity.

Completed last September, the before and after photographs are stunning to witness. By late November, salmon had already returned far upriver to spawn, proving that instinctual information had remained intact even after a century of disconnect.

Pictured; Klamath River flows freely, after Copco-2 dam was removed in California

“Seeing salmon spawning above the former dams fills my heart,” said Joseph L. James, chairman of the Yurok Tribe, the leaders of the dam removal campaign along with the Karuk and Klamath tribes.

“Our salmon are coming home. Klamath Basin tribes fought for decades to make this day a reality because our future generations deserve to inherit a healthier river from the headwaters to the sea.”

Last March, GNN reported that the Yurok Tribe had also become the first of America’s tribal nations to co-manage land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding involving Redwoods National Park.

The nonprofit Save the Redwoods bought a piece of land adjacent to the park, which receives 1 million visitors annually and is a UNESCO Natural Heritage Site, and handed it over to the Yurok for stewardship.

The piece of land, which contained giant redwoods, recovered to such an extent that the NPS has incorporated it into the Redwoods trail network, and the two agencies will cooperate in ensuring mutual flourishing between two properties and one ecosystem.

Back at Blue Creek, AP reports that work has already begun clearing non-native conifer trees planted for lumber. The trunks will be used to create log jams in the creek for wildlife habitat.

Costing $56 million, the land was bought from the loggers by Western Rivers Conservancy, using a mixture of fundraising efforts including private capital, low interest loans, tax credits, public grants and carbon credit sales.

The sale was part of a movement called Land Back, which involves returning ownership of once-native lands of great importance to tribes for the sake of effective stewardship. [Note: This is a weirdly limited definition of Land Back. Land Back means RETURN STOLEN LAND, PERIOD.] Studies have shown around the tropics that indigenous-owned lands in protected areas have higher forest integrity and biodiversity than those owned by national governments.

Land Back has seen 4,700 square miles—equivalent to one and a half-times the size of Yellowstone National Park—returned to tribes through land buy-back agreements in 15 states." [Note: Since land buyback agreements aren't the only form of Land Back, the total is probably (hopefully) more than that.]

-via Good News Network, June 10, 2025

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I was thinking about how I have grown to value mandatory voting over a system that allows allegedly more freedom. Because in country, mandatory voting means I just have to send in a ballot. It can be empty or filled with the write in ballot "pickle farts" if I want.

If I go to the voting station all I have to do is get my name checked off. I don't have to vote if I don't want to.

But it means it is much more difficult for the government to try and suppress voters. Because voters have a legal obligation to go to the polls, so you can't restrict them or try tactics to dissuade them.

Voting polls are open long hours with access to food and water being a fairly standard staple. You don't need any form of ID, you have to be given time to go vote in work hours without penalty if you cannot do it after work hours.

Every now and then a politician tries some small way of voter suppression but it isn't as easy. And so I have learned to appreciate it.

But when I googled, out of curiosity, if the USA had ever had anything like that I was met with a barrage of websites talking about freedom and justice and the absolute liberty of Americans. I thought an eagle was going to bust out of the screen.

Going through some of these I noticed they were think tanks connected to billionaires, one of them was funded and created by the Koch brothers.

Gotta love how often the American "freedom" is actually used as a way to further deny actual freedoms, both linguistically and politically.