y'all ever think about how insane the sauropods were
this is a leg off of Argentinosaurusof them and its already the size of a two story house like LOOK at the size of these fuckers
the fact that any land animal ever got to be as large as this is insane. this shit is only beat by fucking whales, creatures that dont have to support their weight on legs
To be honest I don’t understand how these things were able to, like, move or breathe or anything with how heavy they must have been
This thing would have been MUCH scarier than T. rex cause like look at it
Actually they were a lot lighter than you’d think for their size, they were FULL of air sacs specifically to make them lighter. They moved by having really, really straight legs so the weight was transferred straight down into the ground, and they walked on cushioned pads just like an elephant. Their lungs were sort of constantly cycling air around because otherwise it wouldn’t be much good, and the whole point of having a really really long neck was specifically that they didn’t need to move much!!!!
Like, they’re incredibly unspecialised herbivores who just ate everything and let the gut handle it (hence why they had to get so big, just because they had to fit A LOT of gut in there) like their mouths were basically just Rakes.
This thing was built to sweep its head from high to low to near to far and rake in everything it could eat. By evolving a long neck it basically meant it was giving itself a huge range of motion to eat with but also being VERY energy-efficient because moving your legs takes a LOT more energy than just. Tilting your neck up and down, especially at that size. So this thing was basically built to be incredibly, INCREDIBLY energy efficient, light and weight-spreading for its size.
Blue whales sort of practice a similar feeding style, where because they’re so Big and need so Much food, they just sort of went “ok im just going to take in AS MUCH food as possible as efficiently as possible” and the thing is. Using baleen takes 0 effort really other than opening and closing your mouth. Which is why whales can grow to be really big. See in the ocean weight matters less, so you can afford to just have a big mouth, but land animals have to do it differently.
Being Big isn’t just a case of having lots of food available. It’s about being as Efficiently able to eat it as possible. Hell, i mean elephants basically evolved the same thing, except they’ve just given themselves really long noses rather than necks. It means the elephant can stay in one spot while still reaching huge amounts.
Idk if you actually wanted answers, but, well, here they are.
Remember kids: most conspiracy theories are rooted in Nazi ideology that they used to justify their war crimes!
also the conspiracy that the Pyramids were built by aliens or “a more advanced civilization” actually has connections to racists (read: white Europeans) not believing that non-white people can make such impressive monuments (and a lot of pseudoarchaeology has connections to Nazi ideology/ comes from members of the Nazi party as OP said)
I looked it up to see if there’s any sources I could share with the class and found this article which I think explains/ goes into more detail that I can and greatly recommend Miniminuteman on YouTube he debunks archeology conspiracy and talks about interesting topics in really fun and engaging ways
Shoutout to incredibly contrived set-ups for kink stories, I respect the grind so much. One time I was frolicking in a field of flowers and I found a fic whose summary started w ‘IN A WORLD WHERE THE LOSING ATTORNEY HAS TO SUCK OFF THEIR OPPOSITION’ and it’s been stuck on my mind ever since
I had a friend with non-abusive parents as a kid and whenever we were Up To Some Shit, the agreement was that she had to let me do the talking because she’d sweat guilt from every pore while I just looked at people dead in the eye and just fucking lied.
“You just lied to your mother??” what, like it’s hard?
“WE TAUGHT YOU VALUES” yeah the value of not getting caught. Not sure that’s what you were going for man.
I had a friend with non-abusive parents as a kid and whenever we were Up To Some Shit, the agreement was that she had to let me do the talking because she’d sweat guilt from every pore while I just looked at people dead in the eye and just fucking lied.
“You just lied to your mother??” what, like it’s hard?
“WE TAUGHT YOU VALUES” yeah the value of not getting caught. Not sure that’s what you were going for man.
Lord, grant me the strength to throw away this box that i’ll never use, the courage to throw away this box that i’ll never use, and the wisdom to throw away this box that i’ll never use
The interplanetary authorities have been alerted and are en route to your position. Good luck ever stepping within 100 feet of a ray gun again you little green freak
coworker: hey you should come look at the results of a ph test for a customer’s water
me: I’m king of busy rn
coworker: no really just come here
the ph test:
my honest reaction:
I dont k ow what OP is testing for or what most of the table says but whatever water they’ve sampled it has the same PH levels as seawater and there’s enough mineral content for stalagmites to form inside the sample container. If line 2 is nitrates- the stuff produced by dead junk- then there’s enough of it to make them sick.
So like. Whatever this is, and I hope to God it isn’t someone’s tap water, then as far as my untrained brain can tell, it is reading as a sample pulled from an unfiltered saltwater fish tank that someone filled with street gravel and didn’t clean for a month.
Or like. The groundwater well behind an abandoned farm house in Missouri that hasn’t been touched since 1953, possibly after a raccoon fell inside it
This is the kind of water you’d read about in an old dead British guy’s expedition journal in an entry dated two days before the entire party died of dysentery
coworker: hey you should come look at the results of a ph test for a customer’s water
me: I’m king of busy rn
coworker: no really just come here
the ph test:
my honest reaction:
I dont k ow what OP is testing for or what most of the table says but whatever water they’ve sampled it has the same PH levels as seawater and there’s enough mineral content for stalagmites to form inside the sample container. If line 2 is nitrates- the stuff produced by dead junk- then there’s enough of it to make them sick.
So like. Whatever this is, and I hope to God it isn’t someone’s tap water, then as far as my untrained brain can tell, it is reading as a sample pulled from an unfiltered saltwater fish tank that someone filled with street gravel and didn’t clean for a month.
Or like. The groundwater well behind an abandoned farm house in Missouri that hasn’t been touched since 1953, possibly after a raccoon fell inside it
This is the kind of water you’d read about in an old dead British guy’s expedition journal in an entry dated two days before the entire party died of dysentery
first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line
second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all
third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below
fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?
fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves
sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it
seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him
eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night
ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him
tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk
eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important
twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go
thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme
fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader
fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that
sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why
Killing people with no grasp of recent medical history with hammers
Electroshock and lobotomies STILL. HAPPEN.
ECT was routinely performed on gay people in THE! EIGHTIES!
However bad you think the history of psychiatry and medical assault against marginalized people is, it is worse and more recent than you think, and in many cases ongoing.
Don’t fall for the idea that grevious systemic medical assault is ancient history. Some of you have GRANDPARENTS older than the current recognizable form of the western medical establishment
actual answer: yes, but with some extremely important caveats.
Firstly, because Adobe shitcanned Flash, you can now no longer experience Homestuck in the form it was intended upon release… unless you download the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. This act of unbelievable, nay, saintly generosity by Homestuck’s most dedicated fans allows you to experience Homestuck as it was intended - as close as is humanly possible.
“As close as is humanly possible” is the key phrase here. One indelible part of the original Homestuck experience was UPDATE! Homestuck would sometimes go weeks or even months (and later, years) between updates. I wasn’t on Tumblr back in the day, but at the peak of Homestuck, even if you knew nothing else about it, you’d know when an update dropped because Tumblr’s net traffic would increase something like three to fourfold. People would go apeshit bananas about whatever new revelations the Huss would drop on us.
You also need to realise that Homestuck is a product of its time and while its takes on sexuality and gender identity was pretty progressive (for its time), Huss did use the r-slur a bunch.
While we’re on the subject of the author, Andrew Hussie (of whom my current understanding is that they have not changed name but go by they/them nowadays) is, in the most diplomatic possible terms, a very unique person. They are, at times, a visionary storyteller with genuinely fascinating ideas. At other times, they come off as kinda spiteful towards their readers.
Without meaning to dip into spoilers, some story beats seem (in my opinion) almost intentionally calculated to upset, irritate or mock certain fans. It never rises to the sheer vicious contempt that Steven Moffat had towards Sherlock’s fanbase, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth whenever I go back.
Additionally, and this is where a sort of birds-eye-view spoiler is unavoidable, the story suffers from the Game of Thrones pitfall of repeatedly increasing its own complexity by adding new plot threads without resolving existing ones, eventually leading to fatigue on the part of both the reader and the author. The arcs of a lot of characters just straight up get abandoned, while a couple of characters take an unnecessarily large amount of screen time.
There’s one character in particular that the author openly states within the narrative (the author exists within the world of the story. It’s… a whole thing) that they favour, and whose behaviour the story is warped to accommodate. You’ll know exactly who I’m talking about almost the moment they show up.
Another reason I say that it’s not really possible to read Homestuck as it was originally intended is because a lot of the shit that happens in it fits into the zeitgeist of the internet at the time any individual update was written. There’s a whole section in the late middle third that is inextricably and very specifically tied to how it was like to use Tumblr in 2012.
Additionally, a lot of things have soured with time. There was the whole Hiveswap debacle (it was first announced in 2012. We got the first act in 2017. We got the second act in 2020. We do not even know if the third act will ever come out.). There were the legal threats. There were the Epilogues and Homestuck 2, which were… how do I put this? Not universally liked. There’s been nearly a decade of discourse since Homestuck ended, and a lot of things haven’t grown better with age.
All of that being said.
You should read it.
I cannot express to you just how big an impact Homestuck has had on internet culture. Even people who claim to hate Homestuck unconsciously use slang that it invented. Its unique ideas on storytelling, character design and narrative chronology have, in both subtle and unsubtle ways, changed the way millennials and Gen Z tell stories.
A lot of people were inspired to tell stories because of Homestuck - one example I always give to Lancer players is that Kill Six Billion Demons started as a comic on the MSPA forums (before it was homestuck.com, it was MS Paint Adventures), so Homestuck is in an indirect but demonstrable way responsible for the existence of Lancer. The sunglasses that Gideon Nav from the Locked Tomb wears have been explicitly stated by Tamsyn Muir to be Dave Strider’s. Toby Fox made music for Homestuck, and worked on large parts of Undertale while living in Andrew Hussie’s basement.
We also know someone in the Bluey creative team is a Homestuck, because…
There are subtle but direct references in Bojack Horseman, Hazbin Hotel, Steven Universe, Adventure Time - and those are just the ones that it’s easy to prove! In a more general sense, I think there’s a lot of cartoon series, movies, games, etc. that would either be very different or wouldn’t exist if Homestuck hadn’t happened.
It’s certainly influenced my work.
I think, being very cautious to manage your expectations, that you should read Homestuck. At the very least, a lot of things people say on Tumblr will start to make, if not sense, a different kind of nonsense.
I refuse to believe anyone actually has a visceral reaction of disgust to pineapple on pizza. As far as “weird foods” go that’s one of the most tame examples and pineapple is probably the least offensive fruit to put in a savory dish. Pineapple antis are on some performative shit like the people who pretend to be really uncomfortable with the word “moist”
why do people keep reblogging this from me to talk about how yucky icky they think hawaiian pizza is. blocked. die
If you hate pineapple on pizza I assume you have the flavor complex of a toddler and can’t appreciate the beautiful relationship of salty and sweet coming together in your mouth.
Pineapple on pizza is better than ketchup on pizza at least
Want to know true pizza horror?
There’s a pizza in Sweden.
With Shrimp, ham, cheese, pineapple, kebab sauce, curry, and BANANA. Not plantain, no, BANANA, and it goes on before the pizza is put in the oven, so it’s BAKED banana, with SHRIMP AND HAM AND KEBAB SAUCE AND CURRY. Sometimes they add peanuts or pecans to be extra freaky.
I’ve had it once. The sheer horror of getting a bite with shrimp and banana on it was… visceral. The banana turns slimy when it’s baked, really slimy, and the dry curry powder adds a sandy texture on top of that. It’s… not good.
I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?
alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we’re all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it’s not really about bananas per so–the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.
so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: ‘oh, these ridiculous communists think it’s imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally’. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!’.
there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas’. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn’t really 'have’ them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals–when they’re not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn’t you know it, it’s those intervening middleman steps–export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.
when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.
why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there’s the fact that if they didn’t, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!
this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy’ a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas’ – honduras only 'has a lot of bananas’ because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it’s long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.
so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:
the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimesmurdered
the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate
shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paidat all or forced to pay to work (!)
bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they’re produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.
so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it’s a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not “if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys”, but rather, “if there’s a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that”.
(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?’ reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)
and again, let’s note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it’s not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don’t care and neither does anyone else. it’s about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!
tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don’t see a cent – and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)
I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?
alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we’re all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it’s not really about bananas per so–the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.
so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: ‘oh, these ridiculous communists think it’s imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally’. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!’.
there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas’. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn’t really 'have’ them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals–when they’re not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn’t you know it, it’s those intervening middleman steps–export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.
when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.
why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there’s the fact that if they didn’t, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!
this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy’ a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas’ – honduras only 'has a lot of bananas’ because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it’s long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.
so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:
the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimesmurdered
the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate
shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paidat all or forced to pay to work (!)
bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they’re produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.
so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it’s a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not “if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys”, but rather, “if there’s a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that”.
(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?’ reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)
and again, let’s note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it’s not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don’t care and neither does anyone else. it’s about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!
tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don’t see a cent – and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)
You know, you can argue back and forth about whether or not duct-taping a banana to a wall can be considered art, but it’s an incontrovertible fact that the act of taking that banana, eating it, and re-taping its peel back to the wall absolutely is
I don’t like talking about twitter drama anywhere but I just found the funniest twitter drama I’ve seen and it’s literally about turon (a filipino snack made up of a fried wrapped banana with glazed sugar). Here’s the translated thread as I guide you to this insanity:
“I SCOLDED CASHIERS AT SM MANILA SUPERMARKET.
The line to buy a turon was long and there were only a few turon left on the stand. I was in the middle of the line and there was a lot more people behind me that wanted to avail a turon.”
“There were 2 cashiers that were on break or had clocked out maybe that went to the cashier of the turon stand, and I heard that they were trying to reserve 2 turon. The cashier said ‘Go to the line hey’ but these two insisted that they don’t need to go on the queue. So my blood started boiling because I really hate getting cut off in line.”
“Then the one cashier took 2 turons for the two cashiers that cut in line. One of them said 'Dat ours?’ then the cashier gave the turon to the two cashiers that cut in line and were waiting at the counter to pay. So my blood boiled even more.”
“Then I told the cashier 'Miss you actually let these two cut in line while there’s so many people in line, you’re being unfair to the people waiting at the back’ the cashier said 'Ah the two, sir?’ Then I replied 'Obviously, yes!’ with a bit of an angry tone in my voice.”
“The 2 cashiers that cut in line for the turon were already holding them then I told these other two who were assigned in the counter that 'If you don’t give up the turon, I’ll let your manager know, there’s a lot of people in line hoping to buy it too.’ Dont tolerate that kind of attitude. So unfair!”
“The two cashiers didn’t really say anything and they took the turon from the other two that cut in line. I just don’t get why there’s these kinds of people that could already see that there’s a line but are still forcing themselves in and would choose to be unfair to others.”
“Given that they’re employees of SM, shouldn’t they be more understanding because we’re customers where they work. I’m not saying that the customer is always right, I just wish that they also know what’s right and wrong. And there, I was able to buy a Turon with Chocnut*. Delicious!”
“And the people in line behind me because they were also able to buy some. 😊”
Additional Context:
Turon in SM is priced at PHP 25 which is relatively cheap. It’s bout 0.50 USD?
More comparatively, seeing as OP looked at least middle to upper class (we’ll discuss that later), it would’ve been easily affordable to him, but maybe a bit of a struggle for the two cashiers since they make less than the national average and are also contractual, often losing their jobs and not having any benefits.
Chocnut - a popular Filipino peanut butter chocolate that has a powdery consistency. it often melts in your mouth and is widely popular and beloved across the country.
This shit blew up and I mean blew up like this was just over ONE thread
It blew up so much that TURON started trending in Filipino twitter
Most people agreed that although cutting in line is bad, it seemed like OP felt way too proud of himself and probably should’ve just let it go because they were probably underpaid, overworked employees who only had 15 minute breaks.
OP’s replies were also reeeeally self-important like
Person 1: mygod girl just dont anger a hungry person. lols
OP: I stood up not for myself but for the people who were in line too and willing to wait. Again, respect and let’s just be fair.
Person 2: Oh no, he rly thinks of himself as a hero after what he’s done here 😭😭😭😭
People jokingly started calling OP patay-gutom (lit. dead-hungry), a term we use here for someone extremely hungry and typically those who are hungry because of extreme poverty so OP decided to prove the haters wrong by… telling people that he was actually a millionaire???
Person 3: You’re a bit patay-gutom sis in this part. All that lashing for turon? Hahaha. Get a life girly!
Person 3: This is the deleted tweet of sissy @/op’s handle
[Screenshot of OP’s tweet with an attached censored image of one of his bank account information that shows that he has 1.5 Million Pesos.
OP: Me who’s patay-gutom and a girly with no life, is this okay now? Or do I SS my other banks? Jkkkk✌🏻]
So anyway, here’s some of my favorite tweets translated!
The turon of SM, bow
The turon of SM is queued for The sweet banana, sugar and chocnut Spreads at every bite Giving joy to those in line and the cashier
Yet the poor cashier Who stood for ten hours Was denied two of the turon…
Next time you should just buy turon here I mean you have P1.5 M in Metrobank anyway
[Image of the top of a menu for Amanpulo Clubhouse Restaurant]
The line for turon at SM jk:
[screenshots of two videos of people slowly walking in a line in a crowded railway station]
motherfucker your thread is so long that if you just used the time you used to type to just go to the next sm to buy turon
——————
It’s officially been about a day and half since this happened but it’s still trending right now which is pretty crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever been this blown away with discourse over filo twitter until now. I will probably think about Turon Man for a good while.
I don’t like talking about twitter drama anywhere but I just found the funniest twitter drama I’ve seen and it’s literally about turon (a filipino snack made up of a fried wrapped banana with glazed sugar). Here’s the translated thread as I guide you to this insanity:
“I SCOLDED CASHIERS AT SM MANILA SUPERMARKET.
The line to buy a turon was long and there were only a few turon left on the stand. I was in the middle of the line and there was a lot more people behind me that wanted to avail a turon.”
“There were 2 cashiers that were on break or had clocked out maybe that went to the cashier of the turon stand, and I heard that they were trying to reserve 2 turon. The cashier said ‘Go to the line hey’ but these two insisted that they don’t need to go on the queue. So my blood started boiling because I really hate getting cut off in line.”
“Then the one cashier took 2 turons for the two cashiers that cut in line. One of them said 'Dat ours?’ then the cashier gave the turon to the two cashiers that cut in line and were waiting at the counter to pay. So my blood boiled even more.”
“Then I told the cashier 'Miss you actually let these two cut in line while there’s so many people in line, you’re being unfair to the people waiting at the back’ the cashier said 'Ah the two, sir?’ Then I replied 'Obviously, yes!’ with a bit of an angry tone in my voice.”
“The 2 cashiers that cut in line for the turon were already holding them then I told these other two who were assigned in the counter that 'If you don’t give up the turon, I’ll let your manager know, there’s a lot of people in line hoping to buy it too.’ Dont tolerate that kind of attitude. So unfair!”
“The two cashiers didn’t really say anything and they took the turon from the other two that cut in line. I just don’t get why there’s these kinds of people that could already see that there’s a line but are still forcing themselves in and would choose to be unfair to others.”
“Given that they’re employees of SM, shouldn’t they be more understanding because we’re customers where they work. I’m not saying that the customer is always right, I just wish that they also know what’s right and wrong. And there, I was able to buy a Turon with Chocnut*. Delicious!”
“And the people in line behind me because they were also able to buy some. 😊”
Additional Context:
Turon in SM is priced at PHP 25 which is relatively cheap. It’s bout 0.50 USD?
More comparatively, seeing as OP looked at least middle to upper class (we’ll discuss that later), it would’ve been easily affordable to him, but maybe a bit of a struggle for the two cashiers since they make less than the national average and are also contractual, often losing their jobs and not having any benefits.
Chocnut - a popular Filipino peanut butter chocolate that has a powdery consistency. it often melts in your mouth and is widely popular and beloved across the country.
This shit blew up and I mean blew up like this was just over ONE thread
It blew up so much that TURON started trending in Filipino twitter
Most people agreed that although cutting in line is bad, it seemed like OP felt way too proud of himself and probably should’ve just let it go because they were probably underpaid, overworked employees who only had 15 minute breaks.
OP’s replies were also reeeeally self-important like
Person 1: mygod girl just dont anger a hungry person. lols
OP: I stood up not for myself but for the people who were in line too and willing to wait. Again, respect and let’s just be fair.
Person 2: Oh no, he rly thinks of himself as a hero after what he’s done here 😭😭😭😭
People jokingly started calling OP patay-gutom (lit. dead-hungry), a term we use here for someone extremely hungry and typically those who are hungry because of extreme poverty so OP decided to prove the haters wrong by… telling people that he was actually a millionaire???
Person 3: You’re a bit patay-gutom sis in this part. All that lashing for turon? Hahaha. Get a life girly!
Person 3: This is the deleted tweet of sissy @/op’s handle
[Screenshot of OP’s tweet with an attached censored image of one of his bank account information that shows that he has 1.5 Million Pesos.
OP: Me who’s patay-gutom and a girly with no life, is this okay now? Or do I SS my other banks? Jkkkk✌🏻]
So anyway, here’s some of my favorite tweets translated!
The turon of SM, bow
The turon of SM is queued for The sweet banana, sugar and chocnut Spreads at every bite Giving joy to those in line and the cashier
Yet the poor cashier Who stood for ten hours Was denied two of the turon…
Next time you should just buy turon here I mean you have P1.5 M in Metrobank anyway
[Image of the top of a menu for Amanpulo Clubhouse Restaurant]
The line for turon at SM jk:
[screenshots of two videos of people slowly walking in a line in a crowded railway station]
motherfucker your thread is so long that if you just used the time you used to type to just go to the next sm to buy turon
——————
It’s officially been about a day and half since this happened but it’s still trending right now which is pretty crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever been this blown away with discourse over filo twitter until now. I will probably think about Turon Man for a good while.
americans and canadians have no right to complain about the Banana Question. not only do they live right next to regions rich in gastronomy and agricultural variety, the cuisine and food that they could grow without their colonial states would also be diverse and plenty enough to fill that gap
thank you fandoms for providing the thick outlined coloring printout and four-pack restaurant crayons for maximum enjoyment and creative expression
man, plebcomics has really gotten lazy recently…
someone: maybe it’s iffy to whiteface this character explicitly representing a demographic under-represented in the medium of video games
this fuckwit, apparently: oh so you want everyone who draws mario not eating spaghetti to kill themselves? to actually engage the opposing argument instead of misrepresenting it? you unreasonable monster
Ok so I did some googling and some math about the banana discourse. The fairtrade minimum price for bananas is approximately 11 cent per kilogram of bananas, which is about 5 cents per pound. Given that current pricing for bananas is enough for workers to sustain themselves (albeit with difficulty), I think it’s reasonable to assume that a 1000% increase in wages would be sufficient
This requires bananas to be fifty cents more expensive per pound
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we’ll have to legit tell everyone we can’t have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it’s gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone’s gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can’t save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn’t have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which “lefties” actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
I think what’s often missed is that these luxuries are consolation prizes. They serve to placate and distract a Proletariat from their alienation from their communities and their passions, from how they sacrifice their health through coerced, largely meaningless labor out of fear of homelessness and destitution, and how outside of said luxuries they are unable to take advantage of the fruits of their labors.
And so I think leftists are reacting to the question “How would I feel if I woke up tomorrow and suddenly all these things I enjoy were gone?” when they ought to be asking “In the process of building a world where access to food, healthcare, housing, and even community was no longer linked to the whims of an employer or corporate entity, how important would access to a banana or luxury cruise be to me?”
To put it differently, the anxiety around bananas under socialism marks not the fear of losing bananas, but rather of losing the right to enjoy the products of capitalist exploitation from the periphery. From this perspective, the banana is the perfect fetish object, the ideal substitute phallus, and not just because it looks like a dick. The banana offers the Western worker assurance of their right in the surplus value, or alienated labor, of the racialized worker on the banana plantation. This is why, for instance, American grocery stores often sell bananas at a loss. They know that if they present people with cheap bananas, they will come in and shop because cheap bananas are part of what makes shopping in America enjoyable. When an American goes to WalMart, they do not primarily enjoy the mere access it offers them to the food they need to sustain themselves. Rather, they take pleasure in having the whole world’s labor neatly arranged for them to grab, inspect, fantasize about, and ultimately put back on the shelf because they already have some at home.
To put it differently, the anxiety around bananas under socialism marks not the fear of losing bananas, but rather of losing the right to enjoy the products of capitalist exploitation from the periphery. From this perspective, the banana is the perfect fetish object, the ideal substitute phallus, and not just because it looks like a dick. The banana offers the Western worker assurance of their right in the surplus value, or alienated labor, of the racialized worker on the banana plantation. This is why, for instance, American grocery stores often sell bananas at a loss. They know that if they present people with cheap bananas, they will come in and shop because cheap bananas are part of what makes shopping in America enjoyable. When an American goes to WalMart, they do not primarily enjoy the mere access it offers them to the food they need to sustain themselves. Rather, they take pleasure in having the whole world’s labor neatly arranged for them to grab, inspect, fantasize about, and ultimately put back on the shelf because they already have some at home.
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we’ll have to legit tell everyone we can’t have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it’s gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone’s gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can’t save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn’t have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which “lefties” actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
Sooner or later leftists will have to deal with the issue that capitalism has made many people used to wanton excess and sooner or later we’ll have to legit tell everyone we can’t have plastic treats and luxury produce or cruises instantly available year round and it’s gonna make so many people mad and call you a big meanie worse than stalin over it. It will not be popular at all but someone’s gotta hold a firm no or the planet will never stop collapsing. We can’t save the planet by living exactly how we do now just with a communist banner over it we have to take a loss sorry, shein product cycles shouldn’t have been normalized to begin with.
The banana discourse really separated the wheat from the chaff of which “lefties” actually want a global workers revolution and which ones just want more stuff to be free
