Noticed something a little funky in the world around you and want to figure out what’s up? Especially if there might be something you ought to be doing about it? Not sure what information sources to trust these days? If you’re in the US, federal agencies like NOAA, USGS, EPA and more collect massive amounts of scientific data every day, much of which is publicly available online - if you know where to look.
A PDF version with clickable links is available for free on my itchio page (quakeandquiver); I’ll add a direct link in a reblog.
hey, hi, I was just on the former bird app and came across this info from a brand new study and now I cannot stop screaming internally??? what the actual fuckkkk
It’s an underdog story about classism in which the folk hero (Johnny) is confronted by a powerful man (the Devil) who tries to exploit the hero’s perceived ignorance and inferiority by offering a great reward with impossible odds. Although Johnny warns him that looks can be deceiving, and that he’s going to regret the dare because Johnny is the “best there’s ever been”, the devil is blinded by his greed and arrogance.
The devil creates an awful cacophony of technically excellent fiddle playing that would be impossible for Johnny to replicate. It’s a trick.
But Johnny just grins at him and starts to play “simple” classic country fiddling songs - Fire On The Mountain, House Of The Rising Sun, and Daddy Cut Her Bill Off. He doesn’t rise to beat the Devil - he simply creates his own music from his home, in the style that he knows, and his love of it and the familiarity of the music make his “backwoods” fiddling more perfect than the Devil could ever achieve.
It is thus the devil’s pride, not Johnny’s, that allows Johnny to Bugs Bunny his way into a golden fiddle.
(In that sense, I do agree that it is the most American song: in a land of prejudice and inequities, great power lies - dormant but ever-present - in those we underestimate and attempt to exploit.)
It’s so easy to underestimate the significance of the fact that all of Johnny’s songs are classic folk-americana tunes, honestly! Like, of course thematically what matters is meeting “technically challenging but obnoxious” with “genuinely skilled and beautiful, you just didn’t expect him to be good because he’s poor,” but the music choices are significant for another reason.
Bluntly: Standards.
Sure, the Devil’s portion of the song is extremely technically challenging to replicate….but that’s only relevant to us, retelling the story and trying to replicate it. He didn’t have that standard to be judged against. He just did a bunch of complicated lightning-fast screeching, and tried to set Johnny up to match him, and lost when the kid refused to play that game. The bargain, after all, wasn’t “anything you can do I can do better”. It was just “I’m a better musician than you” and Johnny is the one who actually understands what that means.
But also: all of those name-dropped tunes are incredibly iconic. They’re at least as extremely technically demanding, but more importantly, if Johnny had fucked up even one note it would have been immediately obvious. Every musician in that area knows those tunes. He had to play them perfectly, blend them seamlessly together, and put his own spin on them in order to meet the challenge, and there were no imperfections for the Devil to claim victory over.
All the Devil had to do was make noise. Nobody could tell him that he did it “wrong” because the obvious retort is “no, that’s exactly what I was trying to do, if you think I did it wrong then let’s see you do it better” and that, right there, is the trap.
Johnny had more heart, of course–that’s the point, that lightning-fast fretting work is nice and all but if you don’t understand and respect the history and culture and the interplay of music you’ll always be lesser than those who do. But he also gave himself the better demonstration of skill, because he did the harder thing, and held himself to a pre-existing standard.
(Also he didn’t summon an entire goddamn backup band to do the heavy lifting for him, but like. Of course this is the American folklore Devil, the trickster-spirit archetype figure who is really more akin to the Fae and not the actual Christian concept of Satan, but “the Devil cheated” still isn’t exactly an instant disqualification. That’s kind of a given. He is, after all, the Devil.)
Periodic reminder that they reverse engineered the language of a bunch of different folk tales and “The Smith and the Devil” comes from Proto-Indo-European, literally the oldest known language.
yesterday was the anniversary of the no gun ri massacre. remember that south korea is a hypermilitarized hypercapitalist neocolony of the U.S. empire that was built on the blood of our people and continues to kill korean people today.
AMAZING news: the Reproductive Freedom Act in Ohio has now officially been CERTIFIED to be on the ballot in this November’s election. It gathered 495,938 signatures from 55 counties across Ohio. Republicans messed around & women & young people will make them find out.
Okay, but Ohioans need to get the fuck to the polls for our special election on August 8th!!! The Republican fucks are trying to change our simple majority necessary for amendments to 60%. The Columbus Dispatch says “Issue 1 is one of the most significant questions Ohio voters will be asked in generations,” and that’s no exaggeration. Get out there, and vote no. Early voting and absentee ballot requests are still going on, if you are registered to vote!
We gotta vote no on issue 1 in Ohio on August 8th, 2023.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose admitted last month “[Issue 1] is 100% about keeping a radical, pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
If you are in Franklin County DOUBLE CHECK YOUR POLLING PLACE they decided to move several of them and apparently didn’t bother to notify anybody until the last minute.
a warning to other native folks who may be interested in the barbie movie
there is a scene in which the patriarchys effect on the barbies is directly compared to the effect of smallpox on indigenous peoples. if this makes you uncomfortable as it did me do not feel obligated to watch it. a lot of white people are pressuring native people to watch and see for themselves if it makes them uncomfortable. do not feel that you have to if you think it will negatively impact you. we know what hurts us.
and please note i am not attacking the movie or calling the writers terrible, i am not commanding you dont see the movie. this is a warning post for NATIVE FOLKS who are fully capable of making their own decisions.
Their flagship store and New York has unionized along with 3-4 other stores! This is happening! People are tired of being seen as dollar signs and being made to work just to get to work more, to survive instead of thrive. Keep it UP.
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