Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Oxymoron]

What ? Was Zimmerman found not-guilty in court ?

[Oxymoron]

On an unrelated note, happy 14th of July, y'all.

[timmy]

Heh. From my facebook feed, 13 hours ago:

Happy Bastille Day, ya'll!
Like · · Promote · Share

Alinta likes this.

Juls I'm in a concert today that is closing with One Day More from Les Mis. Bastilling like a boss.
13 hours ago via mobile · Unlike · 1

Timmy YES
13 hours ago · Like

Jake time to bust out the trebuchet and guillotine then?
13 hours ago · Like

Timmy The bourgeoisie aren't going to know what hit them
13 hours ago · Like · 1

Anders Who has the list of who's first against the wall?
11 hours ago via mobile · Like

Timmy I do

It's gonna be a big wall
9 hours ago · Like

Anders LET'S GET TO WORK.
8 hours ago · Unlike · 1

[Oxymoron]

Hah.

[Bakustra]

On an unrelated note, happy 14th of July, y'all.

It's also my birthday. I should probably have Marianne put into my name somehow.

[Oxymoron]

Mine birthday is the 17th of this month.

So in three days I'll turn 23.

[Oxymoron]

(Oh, and happy birthday Baks, by the way )

[timmy]

Juillet for life! I turned 31 on Wednesday.

[Oxymoron]

November is a shitty month anyway, not much else to do.

[The Spartan]

You could have American Thanksgiving. That's in November.

And watch football.

[Jung]

In other news, this really fits with my own observations about the media's tendency to Otherize poverty.

“There is a tendency to imagine that we live in a country where the typical family makes $150,000 a year. But half of all American households have incomes less than $55,000 a year,” he says. “So there's a kind of a cognitive problem here. We don't live in the country we think we live in. The world that is projected as middle class in the media is a world that no more than something like 15 percent of America can afford.”

It's really noticeable to me as somebody from a poor family and really brings home to me in a personally relateable way what people are talking about when they talk about the effects of underrepresentation of minorities/women/poor people/what have you. There's this constant message in popular media, never outright stated but implicitly present in every set, that you're Not Normal, some kind of freakish anomaly, one of those Weird Other People. And I think the quote is spot on on the effects this has that kind of worry me - it gives people a very distorted implicit picture of what's normal and hence a very distorted implicit picture of the state of society.

[RyanThunder]

Do you think its intentional?

[Oxymoron]

On a general basis, I prefer to attribute things to incompetence or a lack of vision rather than genuine malice. It's true more often than not.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Do you think its intentional?

This seems like one of those things where it's not an either-or situation. If culture has you believe that X is normal and you're in charge of the production or distribution of media, you're going to lean towards reinforcing X just because it's what you consider to be the default.

[Oxymoron]

Also, unless you're doing a melodrama, poors don't sell.

[weemadando]

I'm keen to see a Beeb bit from last week called "I pay for your life" or similar, where it's working folks/tax payers and welfare recipients being interviewed.

Could be populist trash or actually illuminating.

[timmy]

In light of that lady woman on that UK talk show the other week telling everyone how she wouldn't let her children associate with children who had 'poor' sounding names, I'd hope we might see something illuminating.

[weemadando]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... Episode_1/

Here you go. If you haven't already, you can use MediaHint to get around the IP block with Chrome.

[Darksi4190]

Ok, so it looks like the two best class time slots I can get that fulfill my program requirements are "Introduction to Anthropology," and "Introduction to the arts."

I wish I could find something a tad more interesting, was really interested in taking an "International Studies" class, but the time slot wouldn't allow me to work morning shifts so I wouldn't get any hours.

[Losonti Tokash]

Anthropology fucking rules.

[Darksi4190]

Well that's the class i'm actually interested in. It's the "arts" class that's going to bore me to fucking tears.

Also, 720$ for two classes. Hooray for tuition hikes!

[RyanThunder]

wat. I pay that much per class. O.o

[Darksi4190]

Community College.

[RyanThunder]

Oh, right. Thought you were at a university for some reason.

[Infinity Biscuit]

If that's how much you're paying at a community college, things are going to hell.