Lady of the Land @Lady@cat.family

it’s pretty rare for me to read a story and say “‘Ocarina of Time’ did it better” but there you go

if more authors asked this very simple question the world of english literature would be in a very different place

the problem is they’re asking the wrong question. the issue is not one of finding the correct vocabulary or phrasing. the question is how to capture what vocabulary and phasing are, by their very nature, unable to touch

i don’t think they’re unaware. i think they’re fully cognizant and it shows in their reliance on trope and pathos. they try to get around the issue by powering quickly through it with a vague directness that hopefully leaves the reader to fill in the gaps. but it is illusory and thin, and once the screen is punctured, one finds an empty room behind

“i don’t understand why it isn’t working!”

writers be like, hey you know this thing which is notoriously inept at capturing depth of feeling, i think i am going to pin everything on that

stop trying to convey emotion with language

remember when Obama was like “privatized healthcare is fine”

nice graphic, NYT

it’s at the end because like, it was already on an EP, everyone has heard it, we all know it by now

but it still vibes so hard

“Sister” is still her best track lmao

my feelings about TSHA music have been somewhat mixed in the past but this one bops

new TSHA album
https://tshamusic.bandcamp.com/album/capricorn-sun

the exception is whenever judith butler deigns to write a column

the secret of opinion writing is that the best stuff lives in news orgs who don’t have the money for actual investigative journalism (so good analysis is the only selling point they might have) and it’s written primarily by underpaid people in their late 20’s with a high rate of burnout

i find this funny because in the 2010’s i was actually pretty into opinion writing and i’m trying to figure out if • it has gotten worse, • the NYT is especially bad, or • it was always kinda shite and i am just more politically conscious than i used to be

my guess is a bit of all three

actually this is a lie, there was one piece by a professor who was like “actually large protests don’t mean shit if they aren’t either built upon or used as the base for resilient organizing” and that was like, pretty obvious imo but at least mildly impassioned

i don’t read NYT opinion pieces (i do read their journalism because i get it for free with my job) but the app shows me the headlines sometimes and i have never read one which didn’t sound like it was written by a massive sellout writing for an audience of people with absolutely zero skin in any imaginable game

“hey you know that guy whose brand of communism was so powerful that it went on to influence black and brown revolutionary politics across the pacific and the americas? well, china's got another one of those now”

new york times if your interest is in depicting Chinese Communism as failed, flawed, and ultimately a false veneer in front of a corrupt capitalist heart, maybe don’t publish an opinion article titled “Xi Jinping Is the Second Coming of Mao Zedong”