jumpingjacktrash:

commie-ringo:

lazulisong:

constablewrites:

scifinut:

youbestnotmiss:

youcantseebutimmakingaface:

trilliath:

halduron-brightwang:

slightlynaive:

diary-of-a-chinese-kid:

This hotel reminds you to steal the toiletries!

I work in hotels/resorts, and honestly, take the little shampoos and soaps! We throw them away when you leave (we don’t know if you’ve opened them and messed with them or whatever, so for health and safety it all goes in the trash)
If you stay at the fancier places or chains, they’ve actually done some bit of thought into the scents for the toiletries, in that if you use them while at home you’ll remember the time you stayed at the hotel and be more likely to return.

Just don’t take the towels or the robes or any of that shit, it’s expensive.

This is true, all soaps, shampoos, and the like are tossed after a guest checks out of the hotel even if it’s clearly unopened because it is considered a health hazard violation in most places if they’re left there. If someone were to somehow get sick from it, a hotel can be shut down. Just take the toiletries, they’re ordered in bulk as is and only cost the hotel a few dollars to order them by the hundreds

And even if you don’t use them, you can donate them to your local homeless shelter or other similar charity and give someone something they could use that would otherwise go to waste.

PLEASE TAKE THE SOAPS. PLEASE DONATE THE SOAPS. It’s one of the biggest requests shelters/supply banks get. You want to make their fucking day? Show up with socks, undies, diapers, and toiletries.

And here I am not taking them to avoid being wasteful.

And here I was not wanting to steal things from the hotels. The more you know.

Reblogging again because I didn’t even think about donating them to charity. I figured they were too small to be useful, but they would be perfect for shelters and the like.

while we’re on the subject! if u are donating things to a shelter that supports women, especially trans women, please also consider going to the dollar store and buying a couple packs of razors! For trans women who are unable to get HRT, being able to shave helps a lot. Also if u can afford it, get a couple packs of the fancy tampons and pads!!!!

What about the packets of coffee and hot chocolate that some hotels have in the rooms? Are those to take or do we leave them?

i’ve known this for decades, since i did something odd back in the 90′s: i asked. so when i stay in hotels i take any still-full toiletries from my room with me, because they’re very handy for road trips and camping.

you can’t take a full size bottle of shampoo camping, after all, that’s ridiculous. mostly you can just rinse the sweat off in the campsite shower and not worry about being a little funky – hell, i used to not even bother cuz i hated the slimy concrete floors and i’d just swim in the lake or whatever – but when you get weird sap in your eyebrow or congealed bacon grease in your leg hair holy crap do you appreciate those tiny soaps and shampoo bottles.

perculiar:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

batmanisagatewaydrug:

y’all notice how black panther quietly but fervently rejects western assumptions about women in non-western countries by not only displaying Wakandan women in a variety of influential positions but by making clear that only outsiders question them

women are shown in all levels of Wakandan society – Ramonda as a trusted advisor for her son, Shuri as the country’s leading innovator, Okoye and the Dora as respected warriors, Nakia as a spy and philosophical compass, unnamed women who serve as tribal representatives and spiritual leaders. it is not at any point suggested that their gender is a barrier to achieving anything in Wakanda.

there’s a moment during T’Challa’s crowning that’s small but very good, when M’baku questions letting a child handle the country’s technological advancement. he specifically calls her a child, not a girl, questioning her youth and perceived lack of respect for tradition but not her gender, which flies in direct defiance of many western assumptions about how masculine non-western men like M’baku treat women and girls.

that moment, as far as I recall, the most any Wakandan man ever directly disrespects a woman. a lot has been made of how much faith T’challa places in his female relatives and warriors, so I won’t rehash that, but it’s Good.

Ross briefly insults Okoye with his assumption that she doesn’t speak English, but 1.) the narrative and the audience both understand this to be an ignorant statement on Ross’ part for which he is promptly put in his place by Okoye herself and 2.) Ross immediately learns and does better. when he wakes up in Wakanda his disbelief is only for the level of the technology, not that a teenage girl is the mastermind behind it, and during the final fight he defers to Shuri’s guidance despite his piloting expertise.

a lot of words have already been written about Killmonger’s treatment of black women: the casual murder of his partner, his disregard and abuse of a spiritual leader, the slaughter of a Dora. it’s just one of many parts of his ideology that mark him as fundamentally misunderstanding Wakanda and being an Other in the kingdom.

Wakanda is a futuristic fantasyland that makes absolutely no narrative room for men who don’t respect the authority of women.

In addition to the Killmonger point –
I love how it circles back to the cultural disparity between Wakanda and the Western world. It demonstrates how similar ideologies – the drive for resource sharing and international responsibly – can appear so vastly different (ie Killmonger and Nakia). It speaks to the cultural environment in which they existed. I believe Killmonger to be a reflection of the internalised toxic values Western society presents poor Black boys – essentially following the well trodden path from vulnerability to violence.

jumpingjacktrash:

most of these are pretty valid reasons why it would be premature to expect to encounter aliens now. i think we also tend to forget that even if there were civilizations at our own tech level right next door, astronomically speaking, their radio and television signals would be unreadably attenuated by the time they reached us. there might be music and images in the faint static our radio telescopes pick up, but it’s so scattered and degraded we’d never be able to tell.

jumpingjacktrash:

basinke:

unpretty:

unpretty:

beezelbubbles:

unpretty:

unpretty:

as a kid i always thought gotham was in michigan because i thought it was a midwestern city like chicago, and there was always shit going down at the pier or in abandoned factories and if michigan has anything it’s a lot of piers and abandoned factories. anyway turns out it’s probably in jersey.

other good reasons for gotham to be in michigan:

  • one of the most heavily forested states in the country with 20 million acres of forests oh my god poison ivy would be so powerful the second she got outside city limits fuck
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  • there’s 20 million acres of this and she’s got plant powers no wonder they want her on lockdown
  • there are more than 6,000 shipwrecks in the great lakes how many supervillain origin stories is that good for
  • there’s a whole class of freighter just for the great lakes
  • “63 commercial ports handled 173 million tons of cargo in 2006″ aka holy shit that is a lot of opportunities for boatcrimes
  • mr freeze has a pretty tragic origin story but if you had to put up with michigan winters and then some motherfucker showed up freezing the town outside of freezing season you would have no mercy
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  • MOTHERFUCKER I JUST PUT MY SNOWBLOWER IN STORAGE DO I LOOK LIKE I NEED THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW
  • imagine batman giving someone directions by pointing to his hand
  • “we believe killer croc is somewhere around here” he says pointing to the tip of his thumb
  • good fucking luck finding stats on abandoned buildings in michigan but holy shit are there a lot of them, no wonder they’re always having fights in abandoned factories and empty warehouses
image
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  • “kitty why are you including that map of the railroads like it’s relevant” because when you’re trying to sleep and you hear a train in the distance it’s fucking spooky okay
  • i have no evidence that traincrime is an issue for batman i’m just saying the ambiance is there
  • michigan has plenty of abandoned theme parks for the joker to hijack
  • our most famous abandoned theme park is dinosaur themed so I GUESS WE KNOW WHERE HE GOT THE T-REX
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  • we have a special kind of ice cream called superman ice cream and i think bruce would be really bitter about it and that’s hilarious
  • there are nine different species of bat in michigan and they have all lived in my kitchen at some point
  • michigan is full of mines both abandoned and active and bats love them
  • put an abandoned train station next to and abandoned mine and you have a totally plausible CRIMEZONE
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  • and none of this is getting into the most compelling evidence
  • put a city in michigan and watch how fast no one gives a fuck
  • gotham, MI needs batman because who the fuck else is going to help
  • batman please save us from the cops and the state government

I always thought that Gotham was Chicago and Metropolis was New York City.

that’s what i thought but apparently metropolis is new york during the day and gotham is new york at night which means the dc universe has three new yorks which i think even new yorkers can agree is too many

here are some more michigan batman facts:

  • we already have evil clowns
  • when i was a kid i used to slide down the slopes made by snowplows on my stomach which i feel is relevant to the penguin
  • there’s always a ton of cars from the 30s driving around gotham which makes perfect sense if it’s in michigan because that’s when we made cars and we’re not over it
  • rick snyder and his emergency managers are basically supervillains and i want batman to punch them
  • michigan is closer to kansas which means bruce can visit clark’s parents and then they’re emailing clark about what a nice young man he is and there’s nothing clark can do about it
  • batman vs superman: the deep dish debate
  • “who would name a city bludhaven” well we’ve already got bad axe and colon and gaylord and climax and grim and hell and frankenlust and gore and that’s just the first half of the alphabet
  • if someone said that a city in michigan had been hijacked by an evil clown that was only stopped when a man in an animal costume kicked him in the face would you even blink
  • this is meadow brook hall in rochester mi
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  • this is the charles t fisher house
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  • here’s the james scott residence
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  • welcome to michigan hope u like houses with turrets and fucked up clowns and evil men poisoning the water

Convincing.

further thoughts about this thread:

  • i have never had superman ice cream and i’m feeling the lack now
  • i too always thought gotham was chicago and absolutely refuse the idea of three new yorks
  • ONE new york is too much new york, new yorkers already think the world is made up of like 85% new york and 10% los angeles and the other 5% is somewhere upstate. they need to be adjusted, not indulged.
  • speaking of places that aren’t new york, it occurs to me there are no fictional cities based on minneapolis/st paul, and this needs to be rectified, because there’s such an odd feel to the tc and it lends itself so well to fiction
  • idk maybe kind of a twin cities toronto hybrid
  • lots of skyways, half the city is underground, water everywhere, any given block is either a strangely clean solarpunk fantasy or something detroit coughed up like a hairball and there’s no in between
  • someone write it pls

dispatchrabbi:

dduane:

hymnsofheresy:

stoneandbloodandwater:

fromchaostocosmos:

fromchaostocosmos:

cutecreative:

hymnsofheresy:

hachama:

hymnsofheresy:

ravenclaw-burning:

hymnsofheresy:

when christian artists change the line in hallelujah from “maybe there’s a God above” to “I know that there’s a God above” >:c

#idk why i’m so unreasonably angry#maybe cuz it’s my fav line

it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired

THAT IS EXACTLY WHY

I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

um woah

I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??

In Yiddish

In Hebrew

In Ladino

Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.

None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace – you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.

Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise – hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.

Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.

(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)

holy shit. woah.

This.

That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.