Due to the delay, we’re watching part 2 on Sunday, if you’d like to join then!

Apparently Blorptube is migrating to a new host tonight, so depending on whether that whole process gets done by like, I dunno, 1 AM CET, you might get your wish!

Edit: Blorptube is back!

Oh, and by the way, in that same letter, William Porcher Miles wrote that the Confederate flag’s saltire represented “strength and progress” because the word saltire comes from the Latin for “I leap” — which, again, I can’t help but find ridiculously ironic, to characterize an entity whose sole purpose was to prevent progress as “progressive”.

Honestly, sort of an aside, but the designer of the flag explained in a letter once, that the reason he chose the X-shape (a saltire) for the flag, instead of the “normal” upright cross as found in the South Carolina secession flag that inspired the Confederate flag… Was specifically to avoid potential objections from “the Jews & many Protestant sects” over the use of a religious symbol. And that’ll just never not be funny to me? “Yeah I’m designing a flag for a settler-colonial state whose sole purpose is to preserve the reprehensible, moribund institution of keeping our fellow human beings as chattel, but like… I’m not an antisemite, OK?”

🎶 He’s nevvuh mettuh nice Sæth Æfricun, an that’s not bløddy surprisin’, mun 🎶

remember simon whistler

Phwow, the way my brain practically just skipped the “postwar” part because of the fact that it literally says Nazi Germany is just… Ugh, it’s just such blatant trickery, right? It’s gross.

A family friend told me when I mentioned masking that “so many bacteria get trapped under masks, we need to live more in tune with nature” — I am so tired. I don’t want to tolerate that nonsense but I also feel like she’s too far gone to be reached.

This hasn’t happened to me very often, but when it does happen I honestly just like… I dunno, feel bad for the person? Like I’ll just assume that the person has ended up with a gambling problem, and that it’s that problem which impels the person to act like a nuisance. So I just wait patiently and say nothing, because saying something would feel like telling a smoker “you’ll get cancer”, like it’s true but it’s not really what the person actually needs to hear, right?

I don’t know if I have the right attitude towards these “lottery people”, though. Am I pitying them, the bad kind of pity? Who knows…

HELL yeah, I love Ethiopian music

That doesn’t really contradict anything I was saying.

Glad you like it!

When it comes to “boring music” that you can play over a loudspeaker at your workplace, Paul Mauriat is probably the safest bet. I could also mention Pavel Ovsyannikov (USSR) and Wangjaesan Light Music Band (DPRK) but since these are from AES countries you might be in for an awkward convo if anybody asks about the background of the music. I also personally like listening to folk music from different cultures, especially saung (Burmese harp) music, but who knows if that’s going to be everyone’s cup of tea.

• Paul Mauriat - The Best World Instrumental Hits CD 1 (c. 1 hour)
• Pavel Ovsyannikov - To The Stars (c. 12 minutes)
• Pavel Ovsyannikov - Starry Turn (c. 40 minutes)
• Wangjaesan Light Music Band - Volume 1 (c. 1 hour)
• I can’t read what this video’s called but it’s music by U Ba Than (c. 1 hour)

Edit: Sorry, two of the links are wrong, one moment.

Edit 2: The links should be fixed now.

At the same time, I don’t necessarily want machine translation to be overused, because it’s still fundamentally fallible — even in subtle ways — and comes with its own pros and cons with regard to environmental impact.

What does this emoji mean?

I saw this article and just had to laugh a little, “Yup! Chicken jockey covered by a Norwegian local paper!” — but the line about how families bringing their young kids generally watch the Norwegian dub while rowdy youth wanting to jump in on the trend watch the English dub, that line does say something about the language dynamic in Norway, doesn’t it? As the collapse of the Septic Empire grows more and more imminent, who knows for how much longer that language dynamic will continue. Lernu Esperanton btw.

It’s also maybe a little interesting that they interview the cinema manager (kinosjef, “cinema boss”), who’s obviously speaking from the perspective of wanting to maximize profits for the cinema. Cinema workers’ interest in the trend — namely, the extra burden of cleaning that the trend creates — does get a brief mention, sure, but the focus is largely on the cinema customers having fun, or complaining, or deciding to SPEND 100+ MINUTES IN A POORLY VENTILATED INDOOR SPACE AROUND DOZENS OF STRANGERS OVER A TIKTOK TREND, which is at the end of ends what affects the boss’ bottom line.

I still think about the Jacob Geller video “Games, Schools, and Worlds Designed for Violence” sometimes. Like when I learned that all houses in the Zionist Entity are mandated to have bunkers, and that families often put cribs for their babies in these bunkers… Well, really, what the Hell does it do to your psyche to literally spend some of your earliest days in a space designed for war, to regularly practice for your whole life going into bunkers with childish art painted on the walls? It frankly probably does the same stuff to your psyche as schools in Seppoland designed around school shootings, where there’s a strange “lockdown” rhyme on the wall to help kids practice the procedure. It’s one of the many ways in which children are taught to see the world through a violent lens, to analyze spaces in terms of how they may be used for violence, to see violence as an omnipresent eventuality.

I am a dwarf and I’m digging a hole, diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole

Now we just gotta know Trump and Xi’s blood types, then we’ll really be able to predict the future!

The interesting thing is that “cut” was in the short’s title — so I think it was maybe originally posted to TikTok and was later posted to YouTube.