Even going outside the context of the barbie movie, it is truly incredible that they could write that last part and try to frame it as a bad thing

Same energy as this:

@thebibliosphere

Grandma needs to come hang out, the Austen fandom is thriving on here. Or maybe that's just my little microcosm of Austen fanatics.

As a european i sometimes forget furefkied are actually real and not american folklore/cryptids. Like you’ve got friendly little bugs that glow in the dark….. b r uh

(There are fireflies in some parts of Europe but more excitingly there are glow worms in Europe, which are like somebody broke open a green glow stick and spattered lumps of the material on the grass. That solid, artificial-looking green glow is very, very exciting if you grew up with fireflies. Like, it seems reasonable to have little bugs that flash - who hasn’t flashed on a warm summer night? I ask you unanswerably - so it’s cool to witness OMINOUS GLOW DROPS. They look like a dropped magical item.)

(Conversely: If you grew up with glow worms, then bright yellow flashy guys are very exciting. They’re making little patterns! They’re like magical little sprites! Like sparks, going the wrong way! Like a CGI effect!)

There is something here about being glad (not sanctimonious) when visitors and pilgrims are pleased by your local glow.

If this has made you think about your own local glow, you may find this article about firefly tourism interesting. I just ate it all up in one gulp and had a very good time.

Gorgeous.

Bunnings is just. like this.

I want to make this absolutely clear to kids: children didn't used to be stuck inside the house like you are today. There used to be public places you could hang out. It used to be fairly safe to walk around because trucks weren't designed to kill children. You didn't need a car to go anywhere so kids without a license weren't trapped. There weren't 24/7 cable news networks constantly scaring parents with anecdotes even as crime was at all time lows and the biggest danger comes from adults kids know not strangers.

It's easy to ignore old people talking about "the good ol' days" because a lot of the people saying that shit are racist assholes, but the way society treats kids today really is objectively worse than how kids used to be treated. You deserve better, and you should know that better things are possible. We just need to kill the suburbs and for-profit news.

When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, I could go for a bike ride or walk with my sister or friends and we could leave after breakfast and not come back until dinner and our parents weren't worried. We lived on the edge of town, so we could turn left into the woods or turn right and go downtown or go straight and go to a friend's house in the neighborhood. I went to a park or the community pool or went out for ice cream alone from a young age.

I also regularly walked to and from school alone from as young as first grade (so, about age 6). And I'm not saying I walked three miles uphill in snow both ways, but I checked a map and it was over half a mile and crossed at least one street that people drive pretty fast on. And that was normal.

All the same for the ‘60s.

I remember reading an article by a famous local sportsman.

It was about how far ranging kids are now than they used to be, and how safety conscious we are now. I think it also mentioned the trending concepts of “helicopter parenting”. I think it also took into consideration (or perhaps those were my own thoughts) that over these generations there has been an increase in population density, changes in transportation and infrastructure, and general social and cultural changes over the decades that contribute to this shift.

I don’t recall it damning or criticising how we are now or how we used to be, but more reflecting on these changes and how approaches to parenting and roving will change over time.

Because his family lived in the same general area over the last few generations he also had an overlay map of where his kids roved, compared to him, his parents, and possibly grandparents. Suffice to say, the range was significantly larger for the older generations than the current.

While the media isn’t helping with the fear mongering thing, there are lots of factors around why these changes have occurred, and they’re not all tied to news propaganda.

It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.

He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.

Like, look at this stuff????

It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!

Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.

And then there's this one:

The Fantasy

For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.

The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.

But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.

Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.

This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.

"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.

"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.

"We often fantasized about Dick's joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles." - Al Bean, about The Fantasy.

Genuinely assumed this was unreality but nope