interesting argument I had: people who hate kylo ren also hate calling him “ben solo” because they see this as treating him as a victim, someone not responsible for his actions. I proposed the suggestion that you can call him ben solo and still describe him as being a murderer and an authoritarian dictator. “ben solo killed han solo” for instance. but this does not sit well with people at all. this still sounds like excusing his actions.
the names “ben” and “solo” being applied to a character do not in fact make that character less morally culpable, even if “kylo ren” is the name that this person chose to adopt when he turned to the dark side as part of a persona that was separate from his past. this is clearly a force-religious cultural practice in the gffa. but if the dark side used to be about choosing a new identity and the light side is about being your birth identity – that’s not the story after tlj. and a lot of people don’t like tlj but to that I say, what’s wrong with telling people that blood familial relations aren’t everything?
many people who dislike kyben renlo are just as married to the idea that “ben solo”, the character of han and leia’s son, could not be a villain. the legacy names are held in such high regard that they cannot and must not be besmirched – even though “ben” is the name obi-wan adopts to live a life of grief and solitude, and “solo” is a name imposed on han by the dehumanizing naming tactics of the empire. both names mean loneliness, loss, separation from one’s family (obi-wan and the jedi, han and q’ira), and despair, caused by the war and oppressive regime
maybe it’s a perfect name for a villain to have had, even if we acknowledge the new name as what he sees himself as
I feel weird calling pre fall Kylo Ren Ben Solo, even though I’m fine calling pre fall Vader Anakin because it’s been used as a dog whistle by Reylos so much. There’s nothing really wrong with calling pre fall Kylo Ren “Ben” the same way we call pre fall Vader “Anakin.” Much less people call post fall Vader Anakin, and when I see it as such, it’s usually during ROTJ. And when it isn’t, the people who are convinced Vader’s blood makes him redeemable didn’t really have internet (because they’re George Lucas and Luke Skywalker) and it’s not really a fandom dog whistle.
But you’re right the fact that Ben Solo is a name created by the Empire makes the dog whistling even more ironic. Although it wasn’t why Han was named Solo, it’s primarily used for recruits from cultures that don’t have the same first name last name format as the Core. And even with Obi Wan using Ben during the Rako Hardeen mission is still part of some of the Jedi lying that pushed Anakin over the edge (also thinking about it, why was Dooku trying to assassinate Palpatine. I must be forgetting some part of the arc).
The generic Adrenaclick will cost $109.99 for two doses, compared with $649.99 for the same amount of drug in an EpiPen. That’s good news, both for financial and safety reasons: STAT reported last year that some parents and institutions had begun filling up syringes with epinephrine as a cost-cutting measure, a DIY solution that could pose great risk to the children who may have eventually needed injections. A more affordable alternative will help ensure safer epinephrine injections.
That’s assuming, though, that the people who need these devices know exactly what to ask for when they’re sitting in their doctors’ offices. Otherwise, they’ll still be stuck with the overpriced product. Here’s why: The mechanism by which Adrenaclick injects the drug is slightly different from EpiPen’s mechanism, so the Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the two are not therapeutically equivalent. That distinction is important because it means a prescription for an EpiPen cannot be filled with Adrenaclick. If you want the cheaper option, you have to have an Adrenaclick prescription.
You must ask your doctor for an Adrenaclick prescription!
I also found a coupon from Impax on 0.15mg and 0.3mg epinephrine injection, USP auto-injectors, which appear to be the generic version of Adrenaclick; these coupons cover up to $100 per pack for 3 packs of these injectors (6 total injectors).
I will be participating on a guacamole contest tomorrow at work. My objective is not to win, but to make every single one of the judges cry.
I will add every single chili I am able to find at the store, all of them.
All the chilis I could find at the store… i wonder if it will be enough 😛
Ready for the judges!!
So updates after the contest! I didn’t win.
This guacamole had the talent that when you take the first bite of your chip it isnt that spicy, but after a few seconds the feeling starts to spread. The judges bravely took a bite and were all happy and as I walked away from the table they started to gasp when the full force of the 6 different types of chili hit them at once.
People were free to taste it afterwards and every face of first surprise and then pain filled my heart with happiness.
I have never seen so much people enjoy suffering tho, because they finished everything so fast I even got time to make a second batch before the winners were announced.
Overall this was great and I had lots of fun making others suffer 😀
I’ve always found it interesting that Hamlet and Mercutio’s deaths could ultimately reverse their closest friend’s strongest character trait.
Starting with Horatio: Through all the death and drama that tears Hamlet up inside, it is important that Horatio is “not passion’s slave”. He is the one able to think clearly and hold it together when Hamlet can’t and it makes sense that during Hamlet’s death he would try to kill himself out of some sense of duty. However I like the idea that Hamlet’s death could switch Horatio from a level-headed stoic to a sobbing shuddering mess completely unprepared to live without Hamlet.
Benvolio is the pacifist and voice of reason for the ill-tempered Mercutio. At Mercutio’s death Benvolio’s “brave Mercutio is dead” is usually delivered with sadness and meek regret. What I really wanna see is a Benvolio who, upon seeing his best friend die in his arms, forgets every reason he ever wanted to be peaceful. This is a Benvolio who would walk straight past Romeo, gaze set, ready to fight Tybalt himself until Romeo pulls him back.
The idea that these characters’ entire establishing trait could become something so flimsy when faced with tragedy is.. incredible
Today’s DAILY SNACK provided by: @shakespeerintomysoul who wrote this meta and who I am shamelessly reblogging it from.
This reminds me of a post I read that suggests that the real tragedy of Othello and Hamlet is that the protagonists are respectively trapped in the wrong play:
If Othello were in Hamlet’s situation, he’d kill Claudius quickly, efficiently, and with soldierly precision. No fuss, no dithering. Just action.
Whereas if Hamlet were presented with Iago’s poisonous lies, he would be incredibly suspicious, doubtful, thoughtful, and prepared to do ALL the necessary research before enacting any sort of vengeance on Desdemona.
If Shakespearean tragedy really is its own unique form, then I think it could be (simplistically) defined as the tragedy of living in the wrong world.
He’s giving 2 billion dollars to start up pre-schools and anti-homelessness campaigns, which you think is cool until
excuse me….
what the fUck does that mean
Jeff Bezos wants to make your children greedy monster gremlins
Am I reading this wrong?
I’m taking this as “the children are customers” and the employees of the school are taking the “customers satisfaction at top priority” approach…
That’s exactly what he meant, these people are just being whiny brats because they can’t stand it when someone they don’t like has a good idea.
That said. I don’t like the idea because imagine teachers being treated the way Amazon employees are.
hey default icon, just want you to know, “these people” are all pretty much reacting to the way he said he wants it to adopt Amazon’s principles. Please, instead of sucking the Cheeto dust from your fingers to type another response, shut up.
I mean, I also think that “the children are the customers” is a pretty bad idea because a) there are already enough customers who act like they’re 5 and spoilt and will scream at retail staff over tiny things, and b) “the customer is always right” and “the children are the customers” of the school does not seem ideal for the purposes of increasing the education level of the students…
I just realized that Clark Kent probably works at the Daily Planet because it means he and his super-senses are planted right in the middle of a bunch of investigative journalists all day long. He probably knows more about Metropolis’ corruption and abuses of power than anyone else in the world, just by virtue of existing in the Daily Planet’s vicinity.
I imagine also that he works there for the reverse reason. Think about all the things he knows about the people in positions of power in the city that Really Should be made known to the public, but he can’t figure out a way to legitimately excuse having that knowledge? Well, all he has to do is drop a hint of a thread in the lap of someone like Lois Lane and his coworkers and friends will be on it like bloodhounds, with a firm air of legitimacy that he himself would never, ever have. Because honestly? Clark Kent probably knows that “I heard about it with my magic alien hearing” isn’t and SHOULDN’T be admissible in a court of law or public opinion. But aiming some good old fashioned investigative journalists in the most competitive news organisation in the city at it? Perfectly legitimate.
Villain: “Hah! What are you going to do, punch me for tax evasion? Lock me up for conspiracy? With what court-admissible evidence? Admit it Superman, there’s nothing you can do here.”
Superman: “Guess not.”
Later, Clark Kent at the Daily Planet watching his colleagues work: “My god, they’re like bureaucratic piranhas. They went through his entire IRS filings for the last eight quarters in thirty minutes flat.”
You know this got me thinking, what is Clark’s news articles like? Did he ever win a Pulitzer Prize like Lois? Is he a good writer?
Clark is an editor, he’s Lois’s editor. He’s the best editor because no one can proof read and spell check as fast as him. The few times he’s gone out on a story is because the Daily Planet was spread thin or short staffed.
The thing about emo (as a musical genre and a cultural phenomenon) is, I think, that it was a response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the Bush administration’s painful mishandling thereof.
No, I’m serious. My Chemical Romance was formed as a direct result of Gerard Way witnessing the towers fall. Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ (an album that, at least as far as I can tell from having been a teenager in Canada at the time, was seminal in influencing the look and sound of emo) is all about the Bush administration – all the lyrics are about life under a democratic dystopia and many reference current events from the time – and it came out in 2004, halfway through the Bush presidency. A bunch of Linkin Park’s stuff makes reference to it also, especially their album ‘Minutes to Midnight’, where they first started moving out of the nu-metal/rap sound they’d been working with before and into a more mainstream emo-rock sound. That album came out in 2007. All of the really big bands with that kind of sound – and most of the smaller ones with more of a punk/hardcore sound but similar themes – were active in the mainstream from around 2001-2010. Many of them didn’t survive past 2009, and those that did either totally reinvented themselves (Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, MCR for the five minutes it took to produce Danger Days, Linkin Park) or became near-totally irrelevant (Paramore dropped an album sometime in the last two years; did any of you know that? And Green Day haven’t mattered since 21st Century Breakdown, which was released in 2009).
Why? Well, many of you are probably too young to remember this, but the 2001 terror attacks were what really made ‘Islamic terrorism’ a real threat in the minds of most Westerners. We’d never experienced an attack of that scale on American soil, and it was just as the internet was really becoming a mainstay in every house and my generation was getting online. As a result, it was not only a major political event, but it was hugely personal – the coverage was everywhere, in everybody’s home, all the time, and there were a lot of kids being exposed to the coverage in such a way that they often had no good way to process it. I’m not exaggerating when I say it changed the way we live. I’m Canadian and I felt this shit. Before, we could fly to America domestic, without a passport. Now? Half the draconian, ridiculous rules that hold you up at the TSA today were initiated in September and October of 2001. It was the only thing anyone could think of to do – lock down, protect your own. People were scared, on a continental scale.
And to make matters worse, George W. Bush’s government, which had to somehow respond to and take point in the response to this unprecedented event, didn’t seem to have the first foggiest clue what they were doing. This was a government that not only didn’t seem to listen to its people, not only lied blatantly to its people, but did it badly. They made hugely unpopular decisions, including starting a war in the Middle East that dragged in multiple countries and completely failed to achieve its stated goal of catching Osama bin Laden or proving that he had in his control weapons of mass destruction (the whole war was predicated on the fact that these so-called weapons of mass destruction existed, that the Bush administration had good reason to believe that they existed, were under the control of the Taliban, and were going to be used against Western targets, none of which was ever proven to be true).
So, from 2001-2009, the two (TWO) full terms of the Bush presidency, there were a whole lot of people who couldn’t vote (be they under the age of majority, like most of the emo kids I knew, or Canadians unhappily dragged along with the US’ boneheaded foreign policy decisions because we’re allies, also like most of the emo kids I knew) and therefore felt, not only scared of basically the impending end of their world in a way that they hadn’t previously had to feel, and not only angry about being clearly lied to and clumsily manipulated when the truth was obvious to anyone with eyes, but also powerless to do anything to change anything about that. And meanwhile, people kept dying in this pointless war and the president kept trying to hold together the illusion that everything was hunky-dory.
And what was popular with teenagers from about 2001-2009? Yep. Emo.
Emo as a genre was very personal, very focused on the individual (with the exception of the albums I noted above), but lyrically and musically, it fit right with the cultural atmosphere of the time. People were scared of the impending end of their world/their lives? Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade. People were angry about things they felt powerless to change? From Under The Cork Tree and Decemberunderground. Emo captured what kids were feeling about trying to fit into a world that was so clearly fucked up and broken and pretending to be okay, putting on a strong face to Show The Terrorists They Didn’t Win. Emo was about stripping away the mask, exposing the messy, angry, frightened, sad, true underbelly of American society at the time, and exposing hypocrisy – in individuals as much as in politicians. The hatred of ‘preps’ and ‘posers’? Totally not just a My Immortal thing. Emo was about wearing your heart on your sleeve, about it being okay to mourn, to rage, to be afraid for your life beyond this – and to keep moving forward regardless, step by slow step.
So what changed in 2009 that made the phenomenon fade without so much as a whimper? Simple. Hope. The Audacity of Hope, to be exact.
Barack Obama won his presidency largely because young people supported him. Those were the young people who suffered through feeling helpless and powerless under Bush, who wanted things to change but felt they had no chance of making it so. Barack Obama was a chance. One of his first campaign promises was to end the Iraq war, a promise he followed through on. And even if his presidency hasn’t been perfect, it has never been the Bush administration, with the feeling that the will of the people was being entirely and quietly ignored by those in power to further their own agendas.
What I am saying, then, I guess, is that it’s time to buy stocks in Hot Topic, because whatever happens in the upcoming US presidential election, there are a lot of young people who may soon be needing black, white, and red graphic band tees and Manic Panic hair dye.
From someone who was in American high school in 2001, we were also incredibly terrified for at least the early Bush years. We were all pretty sure that the draft could possibly be reinstated and we could get sucked into the war. Some of my friends and I had plans on how best to get Don’t Ask, Don’t Telled out of the draft. We were all absolutely terrified of the prospect.
tbh I feel like a lot of us in our early/mid 20s who had an “emo” phase are going back (or just listening to more of) music from that part of our lives. and for the life of me I can’t figure out if it’s because we’re just at that age where we can be nostalgic for early teenager angst or if it’s because of the crushing global angst we’re all now very much aware of.
Huh. This is interesting
Yeah, I started listening to American Idiot again. At first I was like nostalgia. Then I blinked , listened, and was like no actually relevance.
I think there is a little bit of nostalgia though, but it’s not for teen angst. It’s because I know I was able to put these albums away before. I remember that things got better. So if we fight, things will get better again.
Procrastination Station 