While my father was still around, he and my mother revered all things “African.” Kente cloth covered and protected our bodies like saran wrap. My parents didn’t like Dove, Irish Spring and Lever 2000’s suggestion that soap should be white or light-pastel. Cleanliness was next to godliness and since God was Black, our soap was black too. Glade plugins, Lysol air-fresheners, perfumes, colognes and lotions were for white people and those who wanted to be like them; we freshened our air with incense, scented our bodies with oils, and moisturized our skin with shea butter. We would have been Amish had we been white instead of black, and lived in Lancaster County instead of Bed-Stuy. But seeing that I was black and living in Bed-Stuy, Rumspringa came earlier than expected.
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Choire is correct, and we have this conversation in desperation with some regularity:
The Internet is a swirling death trap of dubious gossip, outraged tweet-to-tweet combat and a million identical pieces of over-processed, hormone-injected “news content” written for fourth-graders. There’s a reason for that. It’s called money.
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I learned a bunch about pentagons today:
Most people assumed Reinhardt had the complete list until half a century later in 1968 when R. B. Kershner found three more. Richard James brought the number of types of pentagonal tile up to nine in 1975.
That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scientific American. An amateur mathematician, Rice developed her own notation and method and over the next few years discovered another four types of pentagon that tile the plane. In 1985 Rolf Stein found a fourteenth. Way to go!
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Was It Good For The Gays? My Own Private Idaho edition!
But despite its unappealing (at least, for me) elements, and its typical indie-movie wandering narrative, it’s the central story of Mike’s quest to understand himself that is the film’s most lovely — and heartbreaking — aspect. To be queer is for many a solitary experience; the same goes for the street kids, who must establish connections and platonic relationships in order to build a family and (temporary) homes. There’s nothing political about My Own Private Idaho, nothing that ruthlessly attempts to prove queerness as ordinary or normal. Instead, Van Sant achieves what few artists do: he tells a story about those with an experience other than our own, and does so with such a kind and hopeful eye and results in an audience’s empathy for those who seem lost and on their own.
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Here is a picture of my friend Carrie’s puppy (did I mention the puppy is a girl puppy and her name is Carmella?):
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Moira Weigel on the Tinder thing:
When half a dozen friends and relatives emailed me “The Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse” last Friday, I struggled to get through it. I have spent the past two years researching a book on the history of dating, which has meant two years reading countless versions of exactly this kind of article. As long as young people have gone out and done things they call “dating,” older people have struggled to keep up with their exploits. And writer after writer has made a living out of chronicling them with a mix of prurience and outrage.
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That article about ISIS and the systematic rape of Yazidi women and girls pretty much ended me yesterday. It’s unimaginably sad, and if you want to read it, you can do so here, but if you don’t want to read it, that’s a-okay too. I don’t have any earthly idea about what to do about ISIS (though I did give to the IRC after reading, which does good work with Yazidi refugees, amongst other things, and is well-regarded by the various watchdog orgs.)
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Deleted comments of the day:
Oh, hell, no, you have misunderstood our WHOLE DEAL, sir:
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Always remember that the last photo taken of Jim Morrison makes him look like a preppie in a beer ad. pic.twitter.com/Dw8VODWQy2
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 13, 2015
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I probably just need breakfast but the COMMENTS:
http://adequateman.deadspin.com/how-to-have-an-ac…
“EDIT: Screw the title. This is how to have an actual conversation with anyone, guy or girl.”
I’m so mad maybe other men need reminding that women are people, guy or girl!!!
“What does any of this (word-count padding filler) advice have to do with the other person’s gender?”
SURPRISE!!! The trick is that women have been people this whole time. Sucker.
“Literally everything you said could be applied to women talking to men. The condescending tone this written with will not further your cause (whatever cause that is).”
dhkslfjdlfskljdkljfls;
omg this perfectly articulates why I hate men who say “what are you thinking?” or “tell me a story” as their getting-to-know-you thing. I hadn’t put it into words beyond “it icks me out” & I kind of assumed there were other women who liked it?
Anyway I’m leaving my comment-blocker set to ON, don’t need that before breakfast.
It perfectly captured why “Hi” opening messages don’t work for me either. I felt self-conscious about “demanding” some effort, but this article absolutely laid out with crystal clarity why it feels so lazy and almost aggressively so.
and then somehow we end up with this cultural thing of “men are the pursuers, women are the pursued.” dudes this does not look like a noble wolf hunting its elusive prey, it looks like a house cat whining until someone says “oh, is your food bowl empty?”
This is quite possibly the BEST analogy ever.
I always call this the howler monkey approach to relationships– basically just laying there, in your house/treetop territory, and yelling “C’meeeeeer.”
It’s so lazy! It does nothing to inspire a response or create a dialog. You say “hi”, I say “hi”. Now unless your next statement is going to actually inspire a meaningful response, where are we going? I don’t mind it as an IM, but when guys send me messages on dating sites, it’s so frustrating. And of course it’s usually the ones with bland profiles.
I know a lot of guys approach online dating as a numbers game, so they put minimal effort into their messages, but I think many of them would get a lot further if they wrote themselves a generic “cover letter” and then adjusted it to the recipient.
I just ignore and delete now, almost as policy. It’s no coincidence they usually come right as I’m visiting the site, and usually with guys whose match percentage with me is very low or literally zero.
I have that little voice that says I’m missing out on people, but you know what? I’m not. I’m not a number. I send out messages myself, and while it’s not high volume, I see the return percentage. It’s disheartening. But I cannot imagine spamming hundreds of strange men being anywhere close to being more fulfilling.
“And of course it’s usually the ones with bland profiles.”
Yup. And he put the onus on US to make the conversation about HIM, because we couldn’t figure where to take the conversation, so we actually checked their profiles to find something to say.
I always check the profile of any guy who messages me, or at least the ones over a certain match percentage. It is pretty universal that the ones with bad opening messages also have bad profiles.
Sometimes I read the profiles of ones with ridiculously low match percentages, just because I am curious as to WHY they messaged me (it is because I have a good profile picture and am showing as “recently online” and live within X miles of them).
I would really be interested in seeing some data on how many dates men get by using the “numbers game” versus actual communication.
Probably a decent number of mediocre first, but not second, dates!
It totally is the ones with bland profiles, or the ones where their whole profile is “i dunno what to write ask me if u have questions”. Thanks dude, but that pretty much answered any possible question I could have.
“I’m an open book, ask me anything”.
Okay, but the whole point is that you give me at least a basic starting point of something to ask about! Give me something! I know that when you meet ppl IRL you don’t necessarily know anything about them, but one of the advantages of online dating should be that you can say “oh, hey, cool, we like the same TV shows, we can talk about that”.
And so duh, of course I’ll ask questions! That’s how you have a conversation? But questions based on something! Not just “so, do you like stuff?”
Nope, this profile here is so well-written and comprehensive I could not possibly learn more about this person. No need to message him at all.
Also “TELL ME A STORY” jhfkdshfkdshkf
Raise your hand if you are reminded of specific people either in or now out of your life who do/did this to you.
I thought something was wrong with me that I couldn’t come up with a story on the spot to tell — I’m so boring! I’m so bad at social conversation! — and now I know I’m just a regular human person who isn’t a dancing monkey.
I’ve only ever experienced “tell me a story” as a way to force a text conversation into sexting territory. Weirdly, it took about 3 or 4 instances for me to figure out what my gross ex-boyfriend was trying to do. I’M NOT GOING TO HELP YOU JERK IT, BUDDY. WE ARE NO LONGER THAT KIND OF FRIENDS.
gross gross gross
I fully endorse and identify with jhfkdshfkdshkf
In my experience it comes from a very particular sort of dude who likes to see himself as way more literary and thoughtful and nonconformist than he actually is.
Next time I run into this behavior, I’m going to go with the story that my brother and I would often tell when our parents asked us to tell a story and we didn’t want to: “Once upon a time there was a mushroom. The end.”
In my experience it comes from a very particular sort of dude who likes to see himself as way more literary and thoughtful and nonconformist than he actually is.
*eats breakfast grilled cheese and nearly spits it out*
Holy crap, this is instantly familiar to me.
Anyone who is obsessed with learning stories/sharing stories/talking about stories as a rhetorical move apart from, you know, actually getting on with doing that should be instantly suspect.
+1 breakfast grilled cheese
SERIOUSLY
how did i never think of that before it is GENIUS
Nobody has ever asked me to tell them a story (other than my niece, and I can read to her from a book), but if they ever do, this is the one they are getting.
Jesus this.
I’m really struggling with guys who don’t understand the very simple concept of ‘show some interest in me as a person and talk to me as a human being BEFORE trying to get in my pants’. Cause seriously, I’m not the most prudish girl, and 10 minutes of actual human conversation is going to improve your chances of sex a good 100%.
Yes! I’ve gotten messages where I was like, “Dude, I would have actually genuinely considered your request — not an ‘offer’ because you’re bringing something TO ME — if you had bothered to talk to me like an individual at all.”
It would blow dudes’ minds how much more action they’d see if they treated women like real human beings who want to be valued for who they are as much as being people who may enjoy sex. But it seems like to them, if you’d be cool with a NSA or FWB arrangement, you probably don’t care about conversation or respect or feeling heard.
I really wish I could explain this to the PUA-tards.
LIFEHACK FOR PICKING UP CHICKS: Talk to her like she’s a person, she’ll probably proposition you after that.
The amount of guys who I probably would have slept with if they’d given me a bit of conversation to make up my mind about them. Just walking up and saying ‘hey wanna fuck’ is going to get my auto-reaction of ‘no fuck off’, talking to me in a non-sexual way is going to give me a chance to look at you, give me a chance to discover if your not a creep, and then I’ll probably want to go home with you.
Some of the best relationships I’ve had were FWB arrangements, when there’s mutual respect but an understanding that a relationship isn’t on the cards it can be great. But it does require a partner that understands that women can enjoy and want carefree sex too and still be a whole person
This is one of my great frustrations in life lately! I’m not really interested in coupling up, but I do want to have sex, but for dudes wanting to have sex, but not a boyfriend tends to be interpreted as “oh! a person I can fuck and treat like shit” and I don’t even have the energy to deal with trying to find the ones that don’t think that way/are worth the trouble. 🙁
Ugggh
The last time I tried this, I actually did have a good experience meeting a couple of men. It did take some wallowing through emails. I explicitly said “I would like to hang out with you, ideally, and be friends if we can, so we will chat before I decide to meet you” and that went over surprisingly well. They were both nice.
So, that’s just one experience. But it’s possible? Having this process where I lay down some broad terms … anyone who didn’t seem to pay attention or put in effort didn’t get much of a response.
So much this. Realized this weekend that my future father in law just genuinely does not see women as people. It’s so gross.
Oh NO 🙁
Oh, no, that sucks. My former father-in-law was like that. I coped by interacting with him as little as possible, and when I had to, made eye contact and spoke firmly.
Ew, ew, ew.
I hope and assume his offspring has done a complete 180º.
When I am empress of the world (coronation expected any day now) one of my acts is going to be to forbid the phrase “alpha male” and “beta male” from speech and then erase it from memory so that I never ever ever have to hear another man expending any mental energy on it at all because OH MY GODDDDD NO ONE CAAAAAAARES
I was at a pizza place for lunch last weekend and ESPN was on, showing an arm-wrestling competition. Dining companion and I could not tear our eyes away, but quickly decided that our proposed drinking game for the event–drink whenever anyone self-describes as an “alpha male”–would kill us.
Dear sirs,
Please limit your use of “alpha [sex]” or “beta [sex]” exclusively to nature documentaries. You are not wolves. Or gorillas. Please stop referring to yourself as such.
If you need further assistance, there have been many excellent texts written about human masculinity; please refer to them for a better vocabulary.
Sincerely yours.
They are so not getting it! The whole alpha-beta thing is about maximizing the survival of the offspring related to both all members of the pack. The beta male and female are raising and protecting their nieces and nephews. Also, some of the time it isn’t even happening–it’s all in the mind of the male human observer.
Not even then (sometimes)! I don’t know anything about gorillas, but the alpha/beta wolf thing is a total misconception. Dude who came up with the idea of “betas” trying to overthrow one dominant “alpha” only ever observed wolves in captivity:
“While the captive wolf studies saw unrelated adults living together in captivity, related, rather than unrelated, wolves travel together in the wild. Younger wolves do not overthrow the “alpha” to become the leader of the pack; as wolf pups grow older, they are dispersed from their parents’ packs, pair off with other dispersed wolves, have pups, and thus form packs of their owns.”
I think it’s definitely a TOTAL COINCIDENCE that the conventionally understood hierarchy of a wolf pack had one awesome male at the top of every other wolf when, in reality, the male and female parents are equally in charge.
TOTAL COINCIDENCE.
Anyhow, in conclusion: suck it bros who are obsessed with alphas.
Does any one other than dudes actually ever use the phrases “alpha male” and “beta male?” I can’t think of a single instance I’ve ever seen or heard a woman talk about alphas and betas other than to mock them both equally.
I do, but that’s because I spent too many years working with dogs. It’s only ironic 75% of the time. The other 25% it’s meant to be condescending.
Yeah, I grew up in a dog-obsessed household so there were a lot of jokes about being the Alpha Bitch. Even once we all got past the idea that dogs even work in that manner (see e.g., wolf comment upthread, see also the fact that dogs have been living with humans for a VERY LONG TIME and don’t necessarily even have “in the wild” instincts anymore). It’s still fun to call one’s self the alpha bitch.
Romance novel authors. In romance, alpha male is a synonym for domineering asshole!
Just like in real life!
So true. I used to go out with a guy who was very obsessed with the whole alpha/beta thing. Sometimes he would say/sigh: “I’m so sad I’m not an alpha.”. This of course in the hope that I would say: “Oh no, no, you’re totally an alpha.”. Instead I’d just say: “Yeah, that’s got to suck.”. #notimeforcrybabies
I did a real-life LOL at that. Well played.
Now, as a Youth myself, I was under the impression that dating is when you go out on a pre-arranged meeting intending to get to know a potential romantic partner, and hooking up is when you have sex with somebody who isn’t in a committed relationship with you. Most people hook up during the dating process, but arranging to have dinner with somebody you’ve mentally classified as a hookup is not a date. It’s about the long-term prospects of a relationship more than what goes down on any given night.
Well, as an OLD, I find your terminology and methods strange and frightening and indicative of the fact that your generation lacks moral rectitude.
But as a Youth, it’s practically my responsibility to ngaf what u olds think and back it up with some witty quip about Free Love and hypocrites. Maybe even “phonies” on a day when I’m not feeling very self-aware.
Yes but as an Old, it is definitely my responsibility to give you shit for everything you do, an in particular for how it’s different from what I did, which was the correct way to do it.
Don’t forget when the Youths do The Things the Olds Should Not Have Done (Which Were Totally Great When the Olds Did Them But Not For Youths.)
Yes, you all have to learn important lessons from my experience! I suffered the trauma of casual sex so that you won’t have to!
I suffered those orgasms in the name of RESEARCH and handing down KNOWLEDGE.
They were difficult, my years of carefree exhilaration, but I suffered them in order for you to have the privilege of being serious and responsible for every second of your life.
The premise of all abstinence-only sex-ed/ fundie courtship shite.
I am Very Concerned about third and fourth generation abstinence only/super fundie/quiverfull children because of this. The third generation is mostly still in elementary school right now, but every time I think about it, I just get so sick in the pit of my belly for their emotional and sexual health, amongst many other things.
So, do the Ayn Rand posts get more delete-able comments than other articles? Or is it just that the (ahem) quality of those comments is so much more link-round-up-ier?
Man, Objectivists are the best. The come on like they’re the smartest cats in the room, but all they ever have to work with is the Fallacy of Exhaustive Hypotheses.
THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE PRINCIPLE IN LIFE! HUMANITY IS SIMPLE AND DRIVEN ONLY BY A SINGLE NEED! IF YOU AREN’T SELFISH AND HATE ALL HUMAN COMPASSION YOU SHOULD LIVE IN THE DIRT COVERED BY WEEVILS OTHERWISE YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE!
Oof, guys. Take a fucking philosophy class. Read a book or something.
Why haven’t you given your weevils to the weevil-less? Heartless scum!!
I am giving my blood to the weevils! I am giving all I have to give.
I mean, the morally weak make excuses, like “who even wants weevils?” and “I’m giving blood.” The morally strong commit to having ZERO POSSESSIONS NOT EVEN AIR or admitting that there’s no such thing as altruism. Weevils count. You are weevils plus dirt level selfish. How do you sleep at night?
I don’t, I have given all of my sleep to orphan children in the Sudan.
I can grudgingly admit that you have given the correct answer.
It is very true that the morally strong live in those DIY travel vacuum compression bags.
It makes them easy to store and transport!
They have chosen only the lesser weevils.
(sorry… so sorry…)
Jack Aubrey approves of this comment.
my inner sixteen year just shrieked audibly.
(clicks “thumbs up” and “report” simultaneously)
No don’t take a philosophy class, just stop talking.
No, no, stay out of philosophy class so it’s bearable for the other students. Reading is a silent activity, in the wise words of many a third grade teacher.
Well, I don’t take philosophy classes anymore, so getting Objectivists enrolled makes them harmless to ME, and what is there worth thinking about besides the value of something to ME?
Take a fucking philosophy class.
Trust me, that only makes them worse.
/escaped from the black hole of philosophy student guys
I guess I really want them to take an imaginary philosophy class taught be me, where I just make fun of their embarrassingly stupid belief systems for an hour a week.
“Guys, five thousand years of human civilization have struggled with determining the boundary between responsibility to self and responsibility to others, and you knuckleheads really think you can read one book by a Hollywood screenwriter from the 1920s and you’ve got it figured all out? And this is the best you can come up with?”
This comment is amazing and will also go in my file of canned responses to stupid people.
Now that philosophy class I would take, mostly to sit back and watch them smugly crumble.
“No, Jeff/Chad/Dave/Broseph! Sit down and back away from the Foucault. That’s for grownups.”
(apologies to any decent Jeffs, Chads, or Daves out there)
It’s OK. You have to go with the Daves you know.
But really, was there ever a decent Chad?
Please, take all my money to make this a reality. And film it for me.
Oh my god. The worst party I have ever been to was a philosophy grad student birthday party in student housing. The guy whose birthday it was sat around drinking giant glasses of orange juice, everyone sat in a circle in uncomfortable chairs and didn’t talk, and then about 10 of them vainly attempted to work a digital camera.
It was like being dumped into a French New Wave film and it was just AGGRESSIVELY boring.
That reminds me of a Truffaut film I saw where two old friends run into each other, and (instead of chatting and catching up like normal people) they pull out a pen and paper and calculate the mathematical odds of them bumping into each other that day.
That’s the sort of thing that I can imagine would actually be pretty fun to DO, but REALLY REALLY NOT FUN TO WATCH.
D:
I just…I’ve tried and can’t do it. It’s so much style and so little story. Like everyone learned how to make those movies by watching Ingmar Bergman films on mute with no subtitles and no lip-readers in the vicinity.
Last Year at Marienbad should have been INTERESTING and I am still a touch bitter about that.
I used to work at a film archive and a college movie theater, so I’ve seen an enormous amount of French New Wave films (including basically every Truffaut film). It is SO not my thing.
I know a certain amount of the visual technique, etc., was considered fairly revolutionary at the time, but 99% of the stories are all about The Man Who Always Felt a Little Different From Everyone Else, You Know? Like He Never Fit In?
” Let me correct you on a couple of things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not every man for himself. The London Underground is not a political movement. Those are mistakes. I Iooked ’em up.”
Wanda Gerschwitz, “A Fish Called Wanda”
Oh, and my favorite:
Otto: (smugly) Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda: YES THEY DO, OTTO, THEY JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND IT.
EEEEE FISH CALLED WANDA 🙂
ALL PHYSICS IS THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS.
ALL MATH IS QUADRATIC EQUATIONS.
THE WORLD IS SIMPLE. ZERO-SUM IS THE ONLY WAY
– Every Objectivist Ever
Fuck they are like that, too — no matter what the problem is, no matter what system you’re talking about, no matter how unfamiliar he might be with the material, don’t worry! An Objectivist will be happy to explain to you how THIS ONE TRICK will solve all the problems!
(spoiler: the trick is selfishness)
They really hate it when someone who is not them acts selfishly in a way that impacts them, which always amuses me. “It wasn’t the correct kind of selfishness!”
“Why can’t you see how your rational self interest is served by serving MY rational self interest!?!?!?”
Better yet, go work in a rock quarry like Joe Manganiello, our Holy Saint of Sweet Biceps.
Right? For guys who like to throw around the “you don’t walk the walk” criticism so much, they sure as hell aren’t utterly rejecting a society that impinges on their freedom even slightly.
That’s it ladies, we need to get rid of ALL OF OUR STUFFS or commit wholeheartedly to Objectivism. THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND HERE.
“Coming to America” is incredible, I’m repeatedly being floored by it. This paragraph:
But my permission had nothing to do with if I saw them as good or bad; it had everything to do with them proving to themselves what they already thought: that they were good white people.
is incredible & does a great job disabusing some beliefs about being “not a racist”. And the parts about the intersection of language, identity, and control are breathtaking:
Every time she found him, she found herself. Her self-discovery was rapidly changing the terms of their marriage.
What a great read.
Same. I kind of don’t want to read anything else because that was amazing and it’s unlikely anything’s gonna top it today.
Agreed. And her sister–
He noticed how Sarah had more to talk about in his language with his friends and family than he did. He noticed the compliments: “You should be proud of your wife for learning French on her own;” “You never told us your wife was this smart;” “you never told us your wife was funny.” There were a lot of things he couldn’t tell because there were a lot of things he didn’t know.
Can I just…I want to know that her sister finds people who appreciate her wit and intelligence and who support her in whatever she wants to do. This rest of the article is amazing, but for some reason I’m really fixated on this.
HOLD THE PHONE. AV club just had a go at Eddie-fucking-Redmayn in Jupiter Ascending. Say what you will about the rest of the movie, but he is a glorious god and I will not hear a word against him.
http://www.avclub.com/article/must-love-dogs-case…
Get outta town, AV Club, you guys are no longer with it.
I WILL DEFEND THAT PERFORMANCE UNTIL MY DYING DAY IT IS A MASTERPIECE
My actual favorite part is how he is completely ineffectual at anything other than screaming at people and having abs. Like, every time he scuffles with Mila Kunis, she just kicks the shit out of him.
I just love how he ~flounces~ around. There’s something about him in that movie that makes him look like he might be an actual lizard person? Every single acting choice he makes is totally baffling and I LOVE IT.
oh man also the sleeves on that coat like he’s a giant vampire bat AMAZING
I adore that performance. It is the exact correct performance for that movie and I will do my impression of it forever.
Jupiter Ascending isn’t just perversely unsexy. It’s somehow actively anti-sexy.
… This dude watched a different movie than I did, apparently.
Between this and the all-dude review of it on “How Did This Get Made?” I feel like some movies are just not the territory of dude (especially straight dude) reviewers. Also reminds me of how I loved Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” (which is about a teenage girl), but all the reviews I found online after watching it were by men who were baffled by the movie and hated the ending.
You know, come to think of it, I had similar thoughts about some dude-written reviews of “Jennifer’s Body”. (My test for that one would be: if you are not tuned-in enough to the lives of high school girls to correctly distinguish between “cheerleaders” and “flag/rifle corps,” this movie is maybe not for you.)
I actually also kind of really liked Jennifer’s Body, and thought that it got unfairly panned for basically not being dudely enough.
Back when I was in graduate school, I remember vociferously rejecting the idea that “feminist theater” should be understood as a formal aesthetic movement, but should instead be understood as using historical formal movements to engage with different kinds of content, but now I’m not completely sure I agree with me. It really does seem like there are differences in movies that are directed to women that at least seem to be understood as formal differences, that make old-fashioned critics dislike them.
Hm, hm, interesting.
To simplify it down: dudes are used to everything being created through their lens. Even when a movie is a “girl/woman” thing, it is more often than not created by men (director and/or writers and or/producers etc). The amount of “female” movies actually created by women is very, very small. So, generally, if a dude sees a movie about a girl/woman, he’s seeing that story through the lens of a man. So, while women/girls have been completely conditioned to understand/empathize with male stories due to sheer volume/access, men haven’t been conditioned the same way. Therefore, oftentimes when they come across a female story made by female creators (especially something like exploring the lives of teenage girls) it feels “off” to them, like something is not quite right. Almost an uncanny valley situation. Because it’s literally a lens they never have to consider EVER. It’s a perspective they’re entirely unfamiliar with, because their concept of femaleness is ALWAYS through the male perspective.
(yes, I also lots of pent up feelings about this from grad school)
yeah that could be; that was part of my theory about why people didn’t like Jupiter Ascending — it has the form and signifiers of a space opera, which carry connotations connecting it to what we often think of as a “masculine story” (i.e., Get the Thing, Kill the Guy), but it actually more closely resembles a story like a Regency Romance (Find Love, Find Your Place in the Universe, &c.), which was just super-confusing to (some) people.
One of the earliest tumblr posts I remember about Jupiter Ascending was a fangirl describing the movie as basically the over-the-top mary sue or self-insert fic with overly complicated world-building that many of us wrote in our early fandom days. And when I thought about it I was like yeah, the description of this really does read like some of the stuff I used to write in the back of my notebook when I was supposed to be paying attention in class in high school. I mean, a LOT of JA is basically “fanfic tropes: the movie!” so I think that makes it relatable in that way for a certain swath of geekdom which probably does not include a lot of straight dudes.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Thank you, thank you. This has been another exciting edition of: “Beagee finds ways to use those two degrees in online discussions while applying for jobs in another tab.”
Oh man, I can’t remember who it was who reviewed one of the Twilight films, and the review was basically, “bafflingly, this film won’t appeal to anyone except teenage girls. No idea how it got made.” Really? Really.
Just in to express my love for Jennifer’s Body! Also Ginger Snaps.
I greatly enjoyed Jupiter Ascending but I have to admit it did not strike me as sexy.
I thought the parts with Mila Kunis gazing soulfully into her previous incarnation’s statue’s eyes were sexy for a certain value of that word, but the rest of it mostly depended on the viewer finding Charming Taters/that rando guy who has zero-g sex/Redmayne sexy, and therefore didn’t work for me.
Nathan Rabin was full of himself well before leaving the AV Club for The Dissolve, and now that The Dissolve has, well, dissolved, he’s apparently crawled back to AVC while seeming to believe that he’s still too good for it.
I took two rather-bi-seeming-but-still-actually-straight men with me to see Jupiter Ascending, and damn if they didn’t both wrinkle their noses. I was baffled. So much storming about. So many bees. And those costumes? My my my.
Sure there’s no plot and the characters are all a bit dim, but its so over-the-top for no reason ridiculous that you can’t help but like it.
Like yeah they swung and missed, but fuck it at least they gave it a big swing.
And I mean, horseshit that the characters are any dimmer or the plot any dumber than The Avengers. Tony Stark et al might be quippier, but they’re equally shallow.
Well… what got me was Mila-Princess not being able to read people, like AT ALL, and just going along with what anyone told her. Like when Pretty-Brother wanted to marry her, she just agreed? Really? She couldn’t immediately see through what was going on? CAUSE LITERALLY ANY HUMAN BEING COULD.
So yeah, some of the characters are bit one-dimensional, and our leading lady is a bloody wet.
At least Avengers are funny and supposed to be smart
Well, I’m not saying she was the sharpest tool in the shed, I’m just saying that she wasn’t particularly dumber than a lot of other characters that we give a pass because they can shoot beams. Like, remember in the Avengers when 50% of the Avengers are fighting each other, and Loki is just hanging out on a nearby cliff waiting for them to finish and take him to jail, and then they finish and no one says, “Oh, that’s weird that Loki just sat there and didn’t try to escape or anything, like maybe he’s got an evil scheme that requires him to be in the helicarrier in order for him to complete it so actually he WANTS to be caught?”
Or later, when it turns out Loki’s evil scheme is, “Be mean to Black Widow / Unleash the Hulk”?
Black Widow: “Loki’s plan is to UNLEASH THE HULK.”
Nick Fury: “Unleash? Unleash him how? Like…like what is he actually planning to DO to make him Hulk out?”
Black Widow: “Oh, I don’t…I’m not sure, I didn’t ask about that.”
Nick Fury: “Because we already know he’s pretty dangerous. We’re all keeping an eye on him, just in case.”
Black Widow: “Yeah, no that’s a good point, he’d need some kind of plan…”
Nick Fury: “Yeah or like a scheme or something?”
Black Widow: “Sure so….so should I go back down there? Maybe try…to try trick him again? Get a detail or two about the plan?”
Nick Fury: “Nah, it’s cool. We’ll just do whatever.”
Very true, and I do have this issue with many movies.
At least Joss Whedon is better at hiding it in witty banter?
Maybe, but now I’m onto him. I know all his tricks.
“At least Avengers are funny and supposed to be smart”
(preens)
Oh, wait….
“probably because I’m 6’1″ and 200 pounds and lift weights and wear t-shirts”
“probably because I’m 6’1″ and 200 pounds and lift weights and wear t-shirts”
“probably because I’m 6’1″ and 200 pounds and lift weights and wear t-shirts”
deBoner is too much for me, I’m gonna go look at the puppy some more.
*saves pic to use compulsively for the rest of my life*
Hey Fred, Hey Freddie, Hey Fredkins,
Question. I am exactly one point off of your important Bro-lifications. I am some pounds under 200. Is it possible to trade my extra half inch of height (6’1 and a half) for the pounds that I am missing to qualify? Am I ready to write blog posts about masculinity and hipster men? Does it bother you that I am woman?
Eagerly awaiting your response so that I can switch two meals a day to protein shakes like a real bro AND we can spend more time congratulating ourselves over physical qualities we have no control over!
Blizzard
You got to wear t-shirts and lift weights though.
oh I do. Lifting weights is easy, it’s a real challenge to wear t-shirts though.
See, this is a common problem amongst the hyper-masculine proto-bros who wish they could be like Fredwardo. You need to buy very loose, baggy t-shirts so that you stop tearing them off of your body when you accidentally flex in the “Two Snakes Coming Together” pose from Conan the Barbarian.
See, if I’m remembering the broiest lifting bro from my old gym, what you need to do is get a loose-ish tshirt and then just cut allllmost all the sides off so it is only holding together on your body by the wispiest of connections right at the hem.
Like so:
I promise that absolutely no one will be able to tell that you’d just much rather be naked.
This sort of t-shirt is very comfortable for wearing after a too-hot bath. Bros, they’re just like me!
This t-shirt advice is as solid as Conan’s lats, thanks man.
Can these loose baggy T-shirts say “Nutrishop” on them? It’s very important that they do. I couldn’t possibly wear anything else.
RE: Conan the Musical- that wizard’s hair tho
That’s James Earl Jones. He does what he wants, because he’s Darth Vader’s voice.
*spits gum across the room*
I’m going to be singing that allll day, so thanks for that.
CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES, SEE THEM DRIVEN BEFORE YOOOUUU.
Well if you want to be true bros with Freddie de Broer, you’ve got to do it in the traditional Way of the Bros: you got to knock his punk ass out.
I believe you can do it!
Our God, Freddy is a perfect ass to grass high-bar squat and your gods are as smith machines.
I dunno what this has to do with anything I just wanted to make that joke k bye.
I only vaguely understand what this means, because I am NOT a bro, and all of my strength comes in the inner variety.
I like that you subtly worked in the high-bar vs. low-bar controversy that periodically ignites the bro community.
Low-bar is criminal and must be eradicated!
Bro. Bro bro bro. Seriously, bro, seriously? Bro. (c.f. Tracksuit Dracula just below 🙂 )
Really really, bro.
A rather funny (to me) artifact of hanging around at powerlifting and strongman/woman comps is that I consider someone of either gender who is 6’1″ and 200 lbs to be on the skinny side. But if you see people like Ray Williams standing there being strong and amazing, it makes sense. 🙂
Also, my wife, daughter and I call each other “bro” a lot, because we all love the Tracksuit Draculas from Hawkeye.
Seriously, bro? haha. Seriously.
I have no idea what he’s trying to say in that thing save for, maybe, “no YOU”RE a bro”.
I may nor may not be in the same grad department as him and may or may not have once seen him walking down the hall carrying one of those giant plastic jug-jars of protein powder.
So that may or may not be all I thought about when I read that piece.
I kind of agree with Freddie Boer that “masculinity” is a dumb idea for anyone to talk about except for how it’s a poison that is devastating humanity, but it’s real hard to take him seriously when the subtext of his argument is, “Why don’t you read MY blog instead of the AWL! I can bench press a million pounds! I’m six-one! I know all the words! LOOK AT MEEEEEEEE!”
This is what makes his stuff so irresistibly funny! A relatively good point buried in the layers of that subtext.
It’s also amusing how it’s often not really subtext, but basically text. He is not a subtle writer at all, though he probably thinks he is. If he wrote shorter pieces, I would read him for amusement more.
his whole internet presence is “look how many five-dollar words I can use! look at me! I used a thesaurus!”
imagining him bench-pressing thesauri
This would be an amazing old-timey circus strongperson event.
He could definitely rip one in half with his bare hands after.
Yeah he’s actually written a number of things that I thought were pretty insightful but I feel like even his good stuff sort of circles back to “and most of all, it’s dumb because it’s not on my blog, and you should only click on things that are on my blog.”
ALLLLL THE WORDS!
I kind of agree about his first point (re: anti-Semitism, homophobia), but the rest of it makes me want to remove all Greek lettered things from everything.
Like, I feel like he is right in a general way about that first point, but it seemed to me that he grossly misread Balk — I read it as “men who do not fit the conventional image of masculinity and are wrongheaded enough to believe that they need to compensate for that gravitate to David Foster Wallace because they mistakenly believe that he will lend them some socially-approved masculine cred and consequently get into deeply ridiculous dick-swinging business about him.”
Also, I know someone who is friends with Freddie, and that mutual acquaintance of ours, while hardly the worst person in the world, did at one point tell me that feminism just needed to accept that it was natural for men to be attracted to thin, blonde women. Of course, it’s not fair to judge someone by the company they keep. Cough.
What I really want to know is how he managed to write both a wall of text and an ordered list at the same time.
OK, maybe that guy doesn’t monetize his site, but all of those hits are going to make him feel really good so I can’t click on it because I want him to feel no happiness ever.
If it helps, he and I have mutual friends and by all accounts he’s a perfectly nice and reasonable person when not on the internet.
So go ahead and hate-click, is what I mean. Not, don’t hate.
….so he’s a MASTER OF DISGUISE off the internet?
So basically, he’s a perfectly nice and reasonable person when he’s not being a mean and unreasonable person.
I AM HERE FOR THE PENTAGONS!!
MATHTOASTIES TO ME!!!!
What is your favorite pop-math thing? As discussed in last week’s open thread, I take particular joy in Different Sized Infinities, but I also really enjoy sneaking math into my non-math world in the way of:
PHiZZ units:
Math Knitting (moebius strips, klein bottles, etc)
and phyllotaxis (aka plant math).
Fave pop math thing will forever be turning a sphere inside out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6g3ZcmjJ7k
I wish I’d had more time to learn topology in college but it was less useful to my major than more garden-variety maths. (& our math department was notoriously horrible for non-concentrators.)
Topology was the very hardest thing I have done voluntarily in my life.
(but it was so so rewarding. for example- the intro-to-astronomy prof who, near the end of the semester, tried to talk about the “shape of the universe” even though that was SO not his field, and he got some things wrong, and had the misfortune to be teaching this intro astro class to about 20 first years and 3 seniors who had all taken topology. (okay, so, i was taking it concurrently, but the other two women had taken topo *at Budapest* so they really were on top of things). And they just did not accept wrong information on that one. It was beeeeaaaauuuutiful.)
(also, from that class, and math-but-not-topo related– He tried to talk about astronomy vs astrology in that class, and tried doing the whole “once you get past a certain number of people in the room, chances are people have the same birthday” thing, and one of the Topo-in-BSM women and I raised our hands, because we could see this activity coming a mile away, and said “oh, you don’t have to try to get us to reorganize us all by what month we’re born in, the two of us are the ones with the same birthday. Only, you’ve got a problem with the statistics involved, because the point you’re trying to prove is that people will randomly have the same birthday, and we’re both in this class together partially *because* we have the same birthday, so, not random.”)
(we were REAL PEACHES let me tell you……. At least I mostly stayed quiet in that class. But it was because I was spending all of that time working on topology rather than paying attention to the astronomy. I’m still not sure if that was better or worse.)
I really, really want to take a topology class.
Yay math!!! I too love different sizes of infinities, and I love the terminology of “countable” vs “uncountable”. My favorite pop-math thing is Godel’s incompleteness theorem (or theorems, I guess). Such a great combination of elegant proof + total mind-fuck + rich metaphorical applications to non-math things.
Math knitting! Math knitting is the best!
I feel that maths knitting is a a bit of a tautology. What kind of knitting isn’t maths knitting?
My fave pop math is this riddle: http://puzzles.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/thirtynine.htm It might not be super complicated, but I love it nonetheless.
this pentagon discovery is making me absolutely giddy. Geometry is where I peaked, maths-wise, so I find it wonderful that people are still making geometric discoveries! As a biologist, I look at the plane-tiling pentagons and all I see are plant cells and insect wings. Wonderful!
You may enjoy the various pictures you find when poking around after googling “voronoi”. (also the phyllotaxis link i included probably doesn’t require much higher math, although there is lots of potential for higher math in the topic)
Do you watch Vi Hart’s youtube channel? Her math vids are hilarious and super interesting!
Hyperbolic crochet!
I heart this so much. I geek out over tiling the plane problems. I did my high school honors project about it and then did it as an intro to applying algebra to geometry when I taught 9th grade geometry. It’s just such a satisfying application of real world math.
Hexahexaflexagons changed me from an F/D- math student to a solid A/B. Couldn’t believe they were real and mathematical.
I doodle Sierpinski’s triangles in note margins. Fractals forever!
If you watch one video in the shade balls article, make it the last one. “3, 2, 1, SHADE BALLS AWAY!!”
I watched ALL the videos with my face approximating something like this:
:DDDDDDDDDDDDD
‘And what are your qualifications for Ruler of the Universe?’
‘I scream at people and have abs.’
‘Very good your highness, you’ve got the job’
I do not see a problem here.
“How did you get this job, again?”
“It’s called CAPITALISM, friend, and it ensures that only the best people are the most successful, LOOK IT UP.”
OK I was totally like THE PENTAGON IS HUGE, it’s not hard to find, although granted the parking lot is real confusing. Um… I’m done. I’ll just stay for the puppy.
Also I changed my username because I hated it (it was justjenny, used when I started a blog back in the dark days of the internets when blogs were really a thing). This serves as my official announcement of same.
…is that a Fledermaus reference?
HELL YES. I am so happy someone knew! I guess it was likely on this site. 🙂
CARMELLA. I like this puppy, don’t ever stop posting pictures of it.
wait which hack is De Boer again?
This one: http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/11/boners-for-fu…
Oh shit! I forgot about his feud with Tiger Beatdown! I just remembered him as The Guy that Doesn’t Think Ta-Nehisi Coates Is as Good as You Do.
And don’t forget that time he implied that perhaps the list of Books All White Men Own was, perhaps, not the very best of Mallory’s work. (he said later that he knew that it was not Mallory who wrote that list, but his blog entry, as posted, certainly didn’t made that one clear.)
Oh wow, also I was reading back over the Tiger Beatdown stuff, and apparently he’s tangled with Megan Carpentier back in the day, too. Amazing! Freddie is like a hero of Bromenism!
he basically tangles with anyone remotely in the lefty online world. Though he is extra awful to feminists, apparently.
Lawyers Guns and Money blog: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/05/i-am-…
Balloon Juice: http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/05/07/this-need…
Good gravy, it’s like everything I learn about him makes him exponentially more ludicrous!
….. I sort of want to know about everything that Freddie doesn’t like, so I can add all of those things to my to-do list to read this weekend. Like, I haven’t even heard of “Lawyers Guns and Money”— but on the basis of the strength of this line alone, I will be poking around this weekend: “If Freddie didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.”
Oh, LGM is great. If you can find it, read their piece on Tank Man and Tank Commander, which I think is a pretty fascinating discussion of the relationship between humanity, the state, and justice.
Oh THAT guy
How could I forget him??
On the Choire piece: I have been thinking lately How I Would Get Rid of Internet Ads, if I cared enough to make the effort, which I probably don’t, but maybe I will someday or someone else will do something someday, so I’m going to use the article to share my idea and ask what people think.
Basically, the idea is that there would be a “subscribe to the internet” service, and the subscription money would get divided up among sites based on how much the subscribers used them. Sites would get three levels of payouts:
* Sites that had signed up but done nothing else would get a pretty small payout. This is mostly so they’d sign up even if they thought the idea was dumb, and then the subscription organization could send them an email every month saying “if you didn’t have ads, we’d have paid you this much!”
* Sites that showed ads to non-subscribers but not subscribers would get a much larger payout.
* Sites with no ads at all would get an even larger payout, though the amount would have to be set up carefully, because I want there to be a lot less ads on the internet but if all sites got rid of all ads then I’m not sure people would have any reason to subscribe to this.
Some of the money would be kept aside for some kind of payouts or grants to sites that make the world a better place but don’t get a lot of traffic from people who can afford to subscribe. I’m thinking mostly of Scarleteen and Khan Academy, but I’m sure there are others.
There’d need to be a browser extension for subscribers that would let sites know that they subscribe (so they can send them no ads) and also send some kind of anonymized browsing data to the subscription organization. (Privacy worriers could turn off the second part, with the downside that obviously they wouldn’t be sending money specifically to the sites they use then.) And of course there would have to be an organization running this, which I would want to be a non-profit of some kind.
(I seem to recall that there was a micropayments-ish thing that was sort of similar to this, except it required user interaction – people were supposed to click some kind of donate button on sites, and maybe approve the final division of their monthly payment at the end of the month? – and so I think it didn’t work, because no one wants to think about this sort of thing that much.)
A possible addition would be to encourage sites to have premium content for the subscribers, or give subscribers access to the premium content they already have (if they’re a newspaper with a paywall). I think that might not even need a different payout formula, because it would encourage subscribers to spend more time at the site and encourage people who like the site to subscribe, so even without changing the formula it would increase the site’s payouts.
What do people think? Would this work? Would you subscribe? Is this something I read somewhere else and then forgot about and then re-remembered and thought it was my own idea? (I don’t think it is, but it’s definitely not impossible)
Well, the beauty of ads is that it allows people to access the Internet for “free” (once they have an Internet connection and a machine). That’s why we have ads on broadcast radio/TV, to pay for content that they gets provided free-of-charge to folks who have the necessary equipment to view it.
And I’m not necessarily all about having different premium content for subscribers. Some sites are trying that, but I don’t know that they are having a lot of success. The added value has to be a LOT, plus it makes it harder to share interesting pieces. So if you save your best pieces for the “premium” subscribers, how do they share those pieces with non-subscribers and get them to subscribe?
I mean, I might be willing to pay a small amount of money to keep me from seeing ads, but as long as they don’t interfere with the actual functionality of the site or auto-play audio/video, they don’t normally bother me that much.
I’m not a huge fan of premium content. I”m mostly thinking of sites that already have premium content, which is mostly newspapers with paywalls.* Giving subscribers to this service access to that content might actually make it easier to share, because if this took off then the people you were sharing it with would be more likely to be subscribers to the internet than to any specific newspaper.
I also think that premium content might work better for sites under this model, because they wouldn’t have to run a subscription service themselves, and when they were trying to convince people to sign up and view the content (so that they get paid for views of that content), they could point to the other benefits of the service as a reason for people to sign up. The total added value across the internet could easily turn out to be a lot, even if the added value on most individual sites was pretty small.
Plus from the viewpoint of running the subscription service, it would give people a reason to sign up even if they don’t mind ads, or if most sites eventually ditched ads.
But I agree that I wouldn’t want to see large amounts of the internet become unavailable to non-subscribers. Maybe the system would actually need to pay out slightly less for premium content, so that sites had some incentive to show any premium content they have to subscribers, but also some incentive to avoid having much premium content. I think that kind of refinement to the system wouldn’t need to be added until a problem actually appeared, though.
*And porn, obviously, but I suspect they’d make more money by ignoring this subscription service and staying with their current business model, so they’re kind of irrelevant.
I have so often thought that I would just like to pay a monthly fee that gets distributed among the sites I visit. Like how I’m happy to pay a Netflix subscription, but will pretty much never buy an individual episode or movie. I have no idea if your strategy to grow such a system to a meaningful scale would work, but I’d subscribe!
(um. at least, eventually. I’m not an early adapter of anything.)
There is this interesting prototype from Google, called “Contributor”.
https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/
As far as I understand, you give Google a certain amount of money per month and it enters you into the pool of bidders for Google-served ads on certain websites you identify. Normally, these ads are purchased by advertisers who then serve you their content, but if Contributor determines that you can get in for an efficient price, -you- buy the ad that would normally be served to you, and Contributor replaces it with a pixelated box or a little “thank you” message.
When a Google rep was talking about this to On The Media a week or two ago, he mentioned that one of the options is to have the replacement “ad” be a random cat picture, which someone gets the internet, right.
Oh, that’s quite neat. And using existing infrastructure is obviously good.
It’s not available in Canada yet, but I’ve signed up to be notified when it is. Thank you for the link!
In the UK, you have to pay an annual license fee to watch or record television, which goes mainly to fund the BBC. (There was also a compulsory radio license fee until the ’70s).
Your idea sounds a bit like that. Or maybe just a one-time fee when someone buys a new computer/ tablet/ smartphone, etc.
I tweeted about this to Nicole when she posted the Jim Morrison photo and it bears repeating: I saw a man come into my gym wearing sensible slacks, a crisp button-down shirt, and a sweater tied casually around his shoulders. Fine. Cool. You’re coming straight from work. But, dude, it got up to 80 that day. You don’t need to do this! No one NEEDS to do this!
“up to 80”
this makes me giggle a little because the other day I was driving home from work and it was maybe 85F? so the open windows made it more like 80… and I was shivering “ugh, it’s too cold to have the windows open” i said, then remembered that it was JULY how is that a thing
Florida Summer Stockholm Syndrome, i tell ya
a couple weeks ago I was walking to my car and I was like OMG WHAT IT FEELS SO NICE OUT IT MUST BE 70 WITH 0% HUMIDITY
It was 83 at 45% humidity
Yay tiling! It makes me so happy every time the Toast features math.
This fifteen-second lion cub video has seriously changed my life, you guys.
https://twitter.com/sweatpantspapi/status/6320289…
Someday I’ll be a mighty king so enemies beware….
The little waddle! The sneezey noises it makes because it can’t talk yet! Love.
PUPY
Shade balls are now up there with snow farms on the list of odd climate-related things I never thought about before I found out about them.
Mika McKinnon has a great explainer about why the shade balls are black, not white: http://space.io9.com/why-are-drought-balls-black-…
I’m probably too late for anyone to see this, but it made my day.
“Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here: A Shakespearean Guide to the 2016 Republican Primary”
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hell-is-empty-…
Twitter is blocked at work, so I had to google for Jim Morrison’s last photo and found this amazing website that posts the last known photo of famous peoples: http://lastknownphoto.com/
Keith Moon and Mama Cass died in the same bedroom, years apart? Creepy. I also wonder what Lincoln was thinking in that picture, since he’s got this “You’re shitting me, right?” look on his face.
But that puppy!
nnnoooooOOOOOOOO that is a very not good idea
What I really want to know is how he managed to write both a wall of text and an ordered list at the same time.
I thought the parts with Mila Kunis gazing soulfully into her previous incarnation's statue's eyes were sexy for a certain value of that word, but the rest of it mostly depended on the viewer finding Charming Taters/that rando guy who has zero-g sex/Redmayne sexy, and therefore didn't work for me.
But really, was there ever a decent Chad?
Thank you for linking to the IRC. After reading the NYT piece, I was desperate to find a reputable organisation helping Yazidi people and other victims of ISIS to donate to. I knew I needed to be careful because an awful lot of organisations and publications that have been consistently highlighting the Yazidi plight appear to be motivated by a right-wing, anti-Muslim agenda rather than genuine altruism. It’s incredibly frustrating – genocide is being committed, there’s no simple political solution, and disgusting opportunists are using this atrocity as a means to promote their hatred of all Muslims. The Yazidi are entitled to take help from whoever’s offering, but I want to use my privilege to aid organisations that are actually motivated by a desire to help, not to play politics. So, thanks again.
Haha it would be terrible but at the same time we need to talk about how childbirth works.
It’s a great blow for humanity. Hope the love of Allah can unite us all in peace be a humble muslim , Keep istiqomah. ^^ Thanks for sharing.