Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Let me tell you a story.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a “master-planned community,” constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don’t exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
CHEERS TO GUY WALTON FOR “OUTING” THE FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES
From the article:
Walton has devised his own criteria for named heatwaves in the US, based on duration and extremity, on a one to five scale similar to hurricanes. Heatwave Chevron is classed as a four and is “historic”, Walton said. The meteorologist said he has a list of 20 oil and gas companies – including Exxon and Shell – for upcoming heatwaves and will turn to coal companies if he runs out of names.
for a while there i was sympathetic to tumblr because of how much they’re in debt; i was kind of like “well of course they’re absolutely desperate for new users, they literally need the money or else tumblr goes down forever”. and then suddenly today it hit me that there’s actually no fucking reason for that debt to be causing these ui changes? the userbase has been INCREDIBLY clear about what they want from tumblr over the years, not to mention clear about the fact that even twitter people don’t need this place to look like twitter. it actually would be very… EASY? for them to just make changes in a direction people would actually be HAPPY with?
for fuck’s sake there were people trying to organize a “crab day” for tumblr despite tumblr doing nothing but telling us to go fuck ourselves for months on end. there were people spending hundreds of dollars on check marks just for the glee of MAKING FUN of twitter. can you IMAGINE how much money this userbase would donate to tumblr if they actually made ui updates geared toward what people have been asking for?
if tumblr actually crowdsourced ideas or even just LISTENED to their userbase it may have been possible for them to make way more money than they’re begging for now, they just insist on trying to drive their actual demographic and loyal userbase out for literally no reason
They are doing surveys that are really hard to find because their survey blog has reblogs disabled for some reason.
god i hate how normalized diet culture and shit like bmi and calories are. bmi is based on eugenics. calories are a measurement of how much energy something gives u and not at all of how much weight or fat ull gain. diets have been proven to be harmful and ultimately unhelpful in actually losing weight. fatness has been largely proven to not be inherently unhealthy and doesnt inherently cause health issues.
if anyone has more good links to add on then please do and if anyone knows more on this stuff than me then dont hesitate to correct me!
FOOD IS GOOD. FOOD IS GOOD. FOOD IS GOOD!! if you’re eating, ever, and even/especially if it’s hard, know that i am personally SO SO proud of you
The BMI was invented by Adolphe Quetelet, the 19th century statistician who invented phrenologist anthropometry. He wasn’t just a eugenicist, he was one of the founding fathers of racist pseudoscience. Please do not listen to anything he has to say about your body.
“And get this: While epidemiologists use BMI to calculate national obesity rates (nearly 35 percent for adults and 18 percent for kids), the distinctions can be arbitrary. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health lowered the overweight threshold from 27.8 to 25—branding roughly 29 million Americans as fat overnight—to match international guidelines. But critics noted that those guidelines were drafted in part by the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs.”
If you use Google Docs for your writing, I highly encourage you to download your work, delete it from Google Docs, and transfer it to a different program/site, unless you want AI to start leeching off your hard work!!!
I personally have switched to Libre Office, but there are many different options. I recommend checking out r/degoogle for options.
hey remember how tumblr *just* had to settle with NYC’s human rights commission for discriminating against LGBTQ people in your implementation of the NSFW ban? We do.
