Being on the road and desynced from social media feeds for a few days was an incredible break. Returning back home and catching up has only further convinced me how stupid and useless these spaces are. Considering removing all feeds and simply using social media one-way for the most part. Putting out my thoughts and ignoring the algorithm trash input. I know for a fact the thoughts I choose to share raise the bar of post quality everywhere Im present.
The trash I see incoming is mostly bigotry or the most moronic discourse bait on the planet. deleterious to an extreme degree.
"Ozempic retails for about $900 a month if your insurance doesn’t cover it."
from the above article
It's wild, I talked on stream about a month ago about people abusing Ozempic, a perscription diabetes drug, for the purposes of rapid weight loss, but a major article just dropped about it and the entire article is just one giant documentary on the normalization of eating disorders in the United States.
Ozempic (and other "GLP-1" drugs) prompts your body into a repellant response towards food. As in, the thought of eating food makes you feel disgusted or sick, and eating food can often make you feel nauseous while on the drug.
The article explains how diabetics who NEED the drug are severely struggling to get it because so many people have requested prescriptions to help them lose weight, and that there is an entire class of people who all have no appetites because they're all getting weekly injections of Ozempic or similar drugs. They cant stop taking Ozempic because they will immediately regain the weight because the way the drug works is to MAKE FOOD REPELLANT TO YOU and when that effect goes away, none of your habits have changed.
The long-term side effects of Ozempic aren't heavily studied and its generally prescribed because, for diabetics, the effects can be life saving and are almost assuredly less dangerous than the negatives of diabetes.
And yet all over the country TONS of people are rushing to take the drug as a miracle cure for body fat, and reading the way people talk about it in the article...they literally talk about it as if the drug is purging them of sin.
The American psyche is so fucking broken.
I was barely chubby as a child and was ruthlessly bullied for it even by family members, so at this point I am well aware that people consider me a monster for being fat. Sometimes I feel like I don't always deal with the pain from that or the internalized fat hate all that well, but this article has reminded me just how far ahead of the pack I am.
American culture treats psych meds like they're the devil, they treat HRT like its this sinister injection you have to rely on forever, and yet you dangle weight loss in front of them and all of a sudden they're signed up for life no matter the cost, even if they're sick from it every day.
Americans hate fat people (themselves, usually) so much it literally breaks minds.
The article: https://www.thecut.com/article/weight-loss-ozempic.html
Watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes last night. Welcome and surprising change of pace from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Almost every aspect of the movie was better than the first one.
Dawn had a more coherent message, minus one line that really counteracted the rest of the film, and it was significantly more visually interesting. A lot more attention was paid to the individual personalities of the ape characters, and I like that a lot since the apes are more interesting than the humans.
I wish a little more attention was paid to the humans obsession with "returning to normalcy." The leaders of the humans were unable to thrive because they could not live in the moment at all. They could only see the world as a "decline" from where they had been previously. Despite having superior medicine, weaponry, and nearly unlimited space, the leadership of the humans was blinded by their desire to "rebuild." Notably, they wanted to rebuild the very world that failed them in the first place.
The Apes, despite the perfidy of Koba and his loyals, lived in their world. They made the best of what they had and were able to articulate a thriving society, at least until war broke out.
Looking forward to the third film.
Days after watching Europa Report I'm still stunned at how hilariously childish the movie was. It really wanted to make a "statement" but it really didn't have anything to say at all, and it ended with a goofy squidmonster which undermined its own weird science-collectivism. It would have been so much better if the characters just all died for a picture of some space algae 😂
There was a line one of the characters kept saying like it was meant to be profound:
"Compared to the breadth of knowledge yet to be known... what does your life actually matter?"
and it's so pathetic and soy and reddit it hurts.
When that line dropped I just immediately thought of this ancient meme
Last night watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes and it was a very reasonable and fun movie. It did not have a lot of depth but I didn't go in expecting that. I was happy they just committed to everything being CGI. It was basically just a CG animated film, which I can live with. Nothing amazing in the camera work or the performances except ANDY SERKIS who plays the worlds best chimpanzee. Andy Serkis is an undersung blessing to mankind and apekind alike.
It was fun to watch apes fuckin around.
Ive seen the old school Planet of the Apes movies, which I enjoyed a lot when I was younger (the lobotomy stuff scared the hell out of me), and I also saw the dreadful 2001 remake so when these Apes films came out originally my brain turned off completely expecting a really crappy "apes cinematic universe" but after years of hearing people say they're solid fun, I'm excited to watch the rest and happy I enjoyed the first.
Certain communities have an almost signature approach that really boils down to gaslighting: insult you harshly and then claim you’re emotional and “bad faith” if you respond at all to the fact that they’re clearly highly emotionally involved themselves and acting out of rage to be harsh.
Demented! Internet people are unwell!
I watched Europa Report (2013) tonight and it was so much worse than I could have expected. The filmmakers seemed unable to decide what type of movie they were making, and they actually obscured the only good parts of the movie (set design and acting) with these extremely cartoony and cheap-looking overlays. Im not kidding you when I say about 90% of the movie had the same static frame and corporate logo in the corner. The ending literally made both me and my partner break out laughing. It was like the director saw Cloverfield and then was like "I need to copy their ending, but paste it into an otherwise played-straight spaceflight movie".
It's a shame because the performances were solid and the sets really did look very good.
Also, they ACTUALLY had a Niel DeGrasse Tyson cameo which was beyond hilarious.
Just finished watching Come and See (1985). An absolutely brutal depiction of the life of a Belarusian child who tries to join anti-fascist partisan forces in 1942 only to find his entire country and everything he knew ripped apart by Nazi "combat gangs" which actually burned nearly 700 Belarusian villages to the ground in addition to killing 40,000 civilians in Poland and participating in many other atrocities. An incredibly difficult watch, but well worth it.
Nazi violence was so disgustingly widespread and so basely cruel. A war machine of industrial wealthmaking turned to enable the massacre of countless people all across Europe through the use of roving bands of highly-equipped militias. Sickening.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxR7k6fHib5obuEHDdmVK9uutpYukuEuTk
God i love this.
I'm very proud of today's stream. I channeled pure unbridled depression into something wonderful and had a good time doing it with the imps.
I am determined to build something new. something for real. Im completely done with the bullshit that left spaces on twitter and elsewhere have become. no more, firm line in the sand.
I finally revisited Civilization 6 and won a Prince difficulty game!!
I chose the Cree leader Poundmaker, who I now know has a very low overall winrate in Steam's stats, most likely because his faction and leader abilities are pretty under-powered.
I tried to roleplay a highly diplomatic, trade and religion focused Civilization, avoiding war, dropping no nukes, and building no super-weapons.
Because of the early aggressive spread of my religion, which was called Moo 🐮, I was able to greatly increase my gold income and also purchase important culture units using Faith.
I ended up being the first and only Suzerain of about half the world's city-states. I spread across North America and then relied on diplomacy with City-States to maintain control of South America and a religious foothold in the Mediterranean (yes, I installed Moo as the dominant religion in Rome LOL)
What a thrilling play-through! Civ6 has greatly improved with all the DLC now available since the last time I played.
The victory for Poundmaker is called "Justice and Lasting Peace." Feels good :)
In real history, Poundmaker was a shrewd protector of the Cree people who was tried with treason by the Canadian state for killing Canadian state agents who were attempting to force his people off their land.
The Poundmaker Cree still exist to this day and recently won a posthumous symbolic pardon for Poundmaker from Justin Trudeau. The Canadian state now officially recognizes Poundmaker as a hero and protector of his people. Too little too late from the Canadian state, but the fact his people still persist as a coherent group is pretty incredible to me. Also look at this man's amazing drip:
I've been making a concerted and successful effort to review more films on my Letterboxd. I really ought to just have a media blog attached to my website so people can read my longer-form media writing (my video reviews are still going to be on my channel as they have been all along!)
Would anyone read that? 🤔🤔🤔
The ONLY Official Account of DemonMama ~ The First Demon-Type Streamer ~ Menkhu ~ Awakened Guide of the Teeming Queer Underworld