scans_daily | Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

The Olympics are over, and whilst I still raise a cynical eyebrow at the decision to go ahead with it at all, and some of the decisions of the commmittee, I do have to applaud the competitors and the sense of sportsmanship that came through.

Be it the Uzbekistan Rhythmic Gymnastics team doing a routine to the Sailor Moon theme (and in matching costumes), or runner Isaiah Jewett helping competitor Amos Nijel across the finish line in an 800m heat, or the Italian and Qatar high jumpers being so evenly matched that they asked if they could share the gold medal or Simone Biles having the extraordinary courage to put her own mental health needs first and withdraw from a competition in the global spotlight because she couldn't face it, only to return later in the Games and win a Bronze.

Bleaker news, alas, from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the state of the global environment and the impact of climate change. But you can read that for yourself if you feel up to it.

I'd completely forgotten that Titans Season 3 launches this week so... that's happening.

So is the launch of Marvel's "What If...?" series.

Miraculous Ladybug is tugging at the old heartstrings, as more new heroes are being summoned, including the striking (pun intended) Purple Tigress and as a result, a certain catboy is feeling more and more left out of things. :(

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From:

leahandillyana

As usual, this comment will be long, but I want to spread awareness of several issues and vent over things I cannot talk to irl. Even people I thought of as friends mock me for voicing concerns, so I no longer speak about pretty much anything, because I don’t feel like talking about manga with a person joking that the new media law will finally purge the manga shelves from yaoi.

Middle of the summer means unprecedented wildfires across the northern hemisphere. The loss of lives and property is greatest in Turkey and Greece (which lost its most important honey producing region), but the fires themselves take out the greatest surface in Russia, where fighting them is difficult due to remoteness of many affected areas. The situation is particularly dire in Yakutia, where the lives of minority ethnic groups depend on the existence of the vast taiga. On twitter #SaveYakutia tag is used to boost awareness.

The most controversial olympics in recent memory have just ended, and paralympics are to start in two weeks. Tokyo event will be remembered for banning swimming caps made for swimmers with African type of hair, for banning several Black female athletes with naturally high testosterone level, for banning Simone Biles from performing her signature moves and intense pressure forcing the athlete to temporarily drop out, for banning a Black artist and an Ainu group from performing during the opening ceremony, for a bizarre „controversy” concerning a South Korean archer winning all the gold medals while having short hair, which apparently is a national disgrace, for a Belarusian athlete having to escape to Poland after the government retaliated with persecution for the sportswoman refusing to take part in an event she has not trained for, and for Poland having a handful of medals won by openly lesbian athletes, including one married to a British woman. Another Polish athlete will marry her girlfriend upon returning – of course, not in Poland.

The national media ignored the queerness of the women, to the point of listing the married one under wrong surname. I’m pretty sure there’s a smear campaign in the making against the athlete who thanked her girlfriend on live tv. Katarzyna Zillmann is a hero who risked her life and sacrificed her boat to safe a drowning man, but there is no level of scumbaggery the national media won’t sunk to.

As expected, the olympics led to soar in covid cases in Japan and spread of the most dangerous variants of the virus across the world. On the bright side, female athletes are for me the most beautiful women in the world. I especially adored Jamaica’s running team, the are awesome athletes and gorgeous people. I feel so sorry for Danusia Francis, whose injury caused her to get lowest points in artistic gimnastics. Canada’s soccer team, which won gold during the event, included a nonbinary player, Quinn (no first name), making it an olympic first.

Speaking of national media, tomorrow the parliament of Poland will vote over the bill to nationalize all of tv. I have to say I am scared. If passed, the bill will hugely sour international relations of Poland, as most nongovernmental media in the country are owned by entities from the EU, UK or USA. International tvs like Al-Jazeera, BBC International or CNN will also be banned. If the bill passes, several corporations would have to leave Polish market on an almost day to day basis.

At the same time, there’s a bill banning pride parades and other queer positive public events as well as mixing pro-queer symbols with national or religious symbols. In theory, showing up with my Rainbow Star Of David flag could land me in prison for years if this law passes. Sex education is already banned, so is abortion in almost all cases, and the governing party is still hugely popular, so there’s a high chance both laws will pass.

Additionally, after the holidays catholic religion lessons and taking part in religious catholic celebrations will be compulsory for students on all levels, from nursery to last year of high school. You won’t be able to drop out citing differing religious believes either. I’m really worried.

There are also riots happening across the country against the police, as this summer there were two high profile deaths by police of mostly harmless mentally ill or narcoticized men. When your opponent holds a mushroom picking knife or a stone, you are a disgrace of a policeman if you are unable to disarm him without inflicting lasting damage.

Poland’s sole mainstream left wing newspaper published an extremely queerphobic article claiming that LGBT+ people are a cult “kidnapping” “psychologically unstable” and compassionate teenagers and young adults, and that there’s no need for legally-recognised civil unions or possibility of legal gender change. In the West, that would be too conservative even for conservative media, but Polish leftists have always been very queerphobic. None of the prominent gay politicians or celebrities commented on it, because the article was not attacking gay men specifically and different letters of LGBT do not show much solidarity with each other in Poland – especially since the same issue of the newspaper printed an article sympathetic to gay men. Disappointed but not surprised.

As a personal curiosity, apparently when you are making a soap and mix several floral and oriental fragrant oils (jasmine, hyacinth, lavender, lilac, lily of the valley, rose, vanilla, ylang-ylang) you will end up with a soap smelling like a Christmas tree. I love it, but it was a surprise.

My health, both physical and mental, is worsening. At worst, I am having several seizures a day. I’m purposefully keeping an elevated blood pressure because it keeps the seizures at bay. Red Bull is really helping, I developed a soft spot for this drink.

I still would want to write a post about sworn brotherhood and what is and what isn’t considered incest in East Asian cultures if that’s allowed. Idiocy bordering on racism (and sometimes firmly crossing into racism while vocally denying any racism in name of MORALS) has been bothering me especially strongly regarding this topic recently. I have a very strong impression that Asian media are judged much more harshly than Anglo media – not even Western, because I observed that the same harshness is applied to all European media not produced in English, completely ignoring local culture and context.

A question I want to ask: how strong are animal protections in Hollywood movies? If we watch a movie featuring an animal dying, is it acted or is it real? This question was sparked by The Suicide Squad. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. I am asking because until relatively recently (the 90s, I think), Poland had little to no protection of animal actors and usually when you saw an animal die on screen, it meant you saw the actor die (and sometimes they used dead animals in scenes, pretending they were alive). Knowing the film makers killed animals would forever taint a movie for me. I cannot watch Chinese dramas because I know they do not care for their crews (for example two crew member died in a fire while filming The Untamed). I couldn’t watch Deadpool 2 knowing a stunt woman died during the filming.

Edited Date: 2021-08-10 10:35 am (UTC)

From:

deh_tommy

Oh wow, I didn’t hear about any of that in the Olympics. That sucks.

As far as I’m aware, animal cruelty in movies is supposed to be purely simulated. There’s usually a disclaimer along the lines of “No animals were harmed in the making of this movie” placed in the credits for movies involving real life animals. In the case of The Suicide Squad, American Humane monitored the movie behind the scenes.

Bringing the crack since December 2003

Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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