I slept in and just woke up, so here's what I've been able to figure out while sipping coffee:

• Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.
• The official branding is that a tweet is now called "an X", for which there are too many jokes to make.
• The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn't reclaim the username first.
• The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.
• Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name "X" in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for "X" in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.
• The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term "X Japan" is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.
• Elon had workers taking down the "Twitter" name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says "er".
• He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as "Xvideo". Nobody tell him.

This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.

not that i didn't want to believe you op, but i had to check that er thing out for myself, bc that just seemed too cartoonishly stupid to be real

but holy shit

reblog my post boy

barbie day

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I honestly find this take hilarious because not only is the idea of Ken being nothing more than one of Barbie’s accessories one of the most overused jokes when it comes to talking about the character, but about two weeks later, the Barbie movie came out and made deconstructing this portrayal of Ken a crucial part of the plot.

Also, I know this is obvious at this point, but way to respond to criticism in a mature and nuanced way, Astruc.

the part of barbie that resonates with me the most is how it depicts leaning into humanity as a part of maturing. naturally, witnessing a life/society that isn’t a one-dimensional, happy fantasy broke her. through experience, she learns that her past self no longer fits in the complex world she’s come to know. she discovers anxiety, sadness, shame, disrespect. she discovers mortality. she questions her worth for the first time. not only does she deal with internal dilemmas, but she also experiences institutionalized issues that extend beyond her direct control.

she knew she couldn’t retreat back to her previous ideal world anymore; if she did, she’d be living a lie. life stays complex…but she learns to navigate it. institutionalized issues still exist but she’s contributing in finding small ways to ease the burden. she still has to figure out who she is but now she’s shed the expectation placed on her to be a beautiful prodigy.

the scene where she calls the old lady at the bench beautiful is the start of barbie seeing that perhaps accepting a full life—with the good, bad, mundane and the will to contribute positively to humanity despite how absurdly insignificant the effort may seem—is better than holding onto the illusion of a perfect life. by the end of the movie, she’s embraced the possibility of suffering as part of a truly human life, knowing she’ll find joy and wonder despite.

new metric for media literacy for film bros is if they understand the barbie movie.

the kens are first presented as accessories to their barbies and it's pointed out loud that they don't even have places to stay in barbieland. one of the barbies straight up asks "wait, where do the kens stay?". they're just arm candy made to look pretty and cool while the barbies run their world.

but that's fucked up!!! the film presents it as fucked up! that's why ken screams "YOU FAILED ME!" and why he is insecure in the first place because he wanted to be respected and seen as a person, not someone who only exists in relation to someone else. should he have done what he did? no!!! that's why it's part of the conflict! the root of both of their breakdowns was in their society in that the barbies are supposed to be perfect and the kens exist in relation to them! it's barbie and ken. he was a footnote. that's why barbie apologizes to him in the end and tells him he can be himself. she doesn't have to exist by some set of rules and neither does he! it's barbie and it's ken! sure, the resolution to the whole barbieland issue wasn't perfect, BUT KEN'S WHOLE ARC IS ABOUT HOW THEIR WORLD FAILED MEN. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS MOVIE WAS 'WOMEN GOOD MAN BAD'. WHAT ABOUT THE NUANCE

minor barbie spoilers ahead!

my favourite detail in the movie is when barbie escapes the mattel building and jumps over the exit barrier with no hesitation- but the men get stuck because they don’t know how to get around a door that won’t open for them.

it’s such a small moment but it makes such a strong point. barbie has faced more obstacles in her few hours as a real woman than the men have faced in their lifetimes.

(not to mention that in the end, the door does open for the men anyway without them even trying- they were just doing it wrong)

I can’t stop thinking about how perfectly Barbie portrays girlhood and growing up… How you’re born in a perfect pink world, where you make the rules and get to prioritise whimsies and friendship and beauty, and then you notice something has changed, you discover that something is wrong with you, and you’re offered an illusion of choice, but even if you’d rather keep wearing your heels and go home and be safe and comfortable, you have to choose the Birkenstock, you have to leave your home, you have to grow up. So you’re thrust into this gritty, unfeeling world, where you’re scrutinised and suppressed, where you want to disappear into yourself, because everything is harsh and big and you are tiny and fragile and inadequate. And as overwhelming and impossible as it seems, you survive it. You find truth in the things you believed in when you were young, the inherent good in humanity, connection and love; your friends who look at you while you are crying, and tell you that they cannot imagine what it is that you do not like about yourself.