It’s definitely like this. I don’t entirely mind it for myself, because it reminds me to log off before I can get into a doomscroll where I’m assailed by my family member’s awful opinions. I only use FB for marketplace/buy nothing groups, and the barrage of shitty ads/promo posts helps me log off as soon as I’ve found what I need (or have given up on finding what I need).

Good to get confirmation - I cut around it and will see how it goes. If it is a goner, at least now I know what to do better next time 😔

The YA series Uglies will always be one of my favorites. I remember reading it as a tween and not knowing quite how to describe it; a friend called it a dystopian novel, which is true, but… it didn’t feel quite “right”, or at least, like the complete truth. The setting is utopian, bordering on solarpunk; no more worrying about climate change or overconsumption - we’ve fixed the climate, everything we own is infinitely recyclable in minutes, nature is healing! - the only thing we need to worry about is looking good at the party. But, it turns out, living in a society where the most important thing in the world is being beautiful - even if everyone is beautiful - is maybe… not great? Almost by design?

It was written to be a critique of plastic surgery, but I think there’s so much to dig into even as an adult in 2023. It probably lit a nice rebellious fire in teenage me, questioning authority and the seemingly unquestionable rules of the world. The relationships between the characters are still fascinating to me, and I’m still mesmerized by the beautiful, terrible world they live in. Even though the writing style is very simple to be easily digestible to early readers, the ideas the book explores are as complicated as you let them be. Surveillance, nature vs. nurture, institutionalized self-hatred, autonomy, sustainability, forced metamorphosis… there’s a lot to unpack.

I believe some of it is cold war sentiment, but also, the fact that Russia has remained a political enemy of the US. I also suspect a part of it is that it’s harder to find Russian (or Russian-speaking) actors who would agree to play such dehumanizing roles, but obviously, a lot of actors don’t have the luxury of choosing. A big improvement would be to have actual Russian-speaking consultants involved in casting - which, IMO, would be good for casting any actor for a foreign-language-speaking role. It’s bizarre to me that it’s not already a bare minimum requirement for people to be fluent in the languages they’re speaking.

It’s extremely frustrating to me as a native Russian speaker (just commented about this in another thread), since Hollywood looooves Russian villains but hates hiring Russian actors. I actually could not watch later seasons of Stranger Things because of this. I’ve lived in the US my whole life and am now way more fluent in English than Russian, but chose to watch some episodes in Russian because it was way more bearable.

Totally agreed. I’m Ukrainian and nothing gets me as heated watching any movie as Russian villains (almost always played by non-Russian-speaking actors). Hollywood looooves movie villains that reflect the government’s Big Bad Wolves and it’s just disgusting to me. Beyond the obvious facts that xenophobia is bad and using the film industry to stoke the fires of the US’s international feuds is bad, it just fucking hurts the way it feels like people put on costumes to approximate my dad’s appearance and voice because it’s the most basic shorthand for “evil” they can think of.

Cucumber because I love cucumbers and zucchini doesn’t bring me that much joy