Post a news story, entertain me!

Much more efficient if we'd just offered them opioids and cigarettes

Fans Are Ruining Game of Thrones—And Everything Else

Here then, it starts to become a little clearer what exactly is going on with these petitions. Back in the early 1990s, the American critic Fredric Jameson talked of the collapse in the perceived distinction between the economic and the cultural. As late as the 1960s, Jameson said, it was still possible to argue that the cultural occupied an autonomous space, outside of or in some way distinct from capitalism. But in an era of franchise entertainment and increasingly homogenized cultural production, where films and television and even books are judged as successes based on the money they bring in, such a space is increasingly unthinkable.
If you need a large demographic to invest into a specific pop-culture product, then this needs to be a stable commodity that not only brings in the buyer, but also continues to keep him happy. So when buyers do not get what they want (or were led to believe they could expect) all they can do is the equivalent of asking for a refund or exchange. After all, they didn’t get what they paid for, and the ideology of contemporary capitalism has made an axiomatic truth out of the customer always being right.
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Thanks to this logic, the fan tends toward arrangements that are strangely literalist. The product is what it is, and can be only that—hence the complaint on the petition that the eighth season didn’t “feel like Game of Thrones,” which shows the extent to which the fan depends upon pop culture living up to its product description. This is, of course, entirely at odds with the endless interpretability of art and highlights the ways in which, even though the ethos of capitalism has sunk into the core of how we think about culture, there is still a moment in which it slips beyond the reach of the market. The dissatisfaction of the fans who sign these petitions signals the limits of the capitalist logic that seeks to be the frame in which every cultural engagement takes place.
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What’s needed is a move away from the perpetually disappointed figure of the fan. Rather than see a given cultural text (or culture more generally) as reinforcing and satisfying a consumer/service-provider relationship, audiences must judge and engage with art outside of the logic of what they think they are owed. Pop culture doesn’t need fans—but it could use more fandom. At its best, fandom is a playful, participatory, and dialogic engagement with a work of art—exploring it, remaking it, rewriting it. Fandom tends not to see the text in dogmatic terms, but as a mutable creation that lends itself to multiple interpretations. Just as the fan was birthed by contemporary capitalism, so, too, was fandom, helped by the rise of networked technologies, message boards, listservs, Tumblr accounts, and much more besides. What we need, in other words, are fewer petitions and more fan fiction.
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In fandom, we see the possibility and multiplicity that exists beyond the frustrations and dissatisfactions of consumers who feel like they didn’t get the right return on their investment. Abolish this canonical, consumer approach to pop culture, abolish the fan-consumer, and liberate pop culture from the stultifying logic of the service industry and market capitalism. Let’s not view culture as a product to own, but as a creative space in which to share something beyond price, profit, exchange, and loss.

That article was more poorly written than the final season of Game of Thrones. I want my time back from the website. Who's with me?

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

That article was more poorly written than the final season of Game of Thrones. I want my time back from the website. Who's with me?

I’ll set up a petition when I get home.

amazing use of stock imagery there. And from the "also read" on that page:

Man Swallows AirPod While Sleeping, Still Able to Use It After Pooping It Out

I kind of feel like we have stumbled on some poo fetish website. I had a hard time believing poo amnesia, but I'm having a *really* hard time believing PooPods.

Study links irregular sleep patterns to metabolic disorders

A new study has found that not sticking to a regular bedtime and wakeup schedule—and getting different amounts of sleep each night—can put a person at higher risk for obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension, high blood sugar and other metabolic disorders. In fact, for every hour of variability in time to bed and time asleep, a person may have up to a 27% greater chance of experiencing a metabolic abnormality.

Female Shark in Seoul Aquarium Eats Male Shark Because He Kept Bumping Into Her

It took the 8-year-old female 21 hours to eat the 5-year-old male inside a tank at the COEX Aquarium. According to video of the consumption, the female shark started with the male’s head and slowly went about consuming the rest of his body.

This act of shark cannibalism likely was the result of the sharks bumping into one another. “Sharks have their own territories,” an aquarium official told Reuters. “Sometimes, when they bump into each other, they bite out of astonishment.”

Despite her best efforts to make a meal of the male shark, the female shark is expected to at some point regurgitate the remains of her former roommate.

As much as I love aquariums (and zoos), that's good example of why I find them deeply disturbing. Animals with massive ranges kept in relatively small tanks.

...I'm going to go eat breakfast.

As cool as that was, it's from 5 years ago. IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/6nHtqCn/a.png)

Well, I somehow missed it.

Finger slipped... Sorry.

C-SPAN (non-profit that televises US gov't proceedings) desperately needs this.

Thanks for that. Good way to start the day!

Still posting stories that have come out of the awesome Stanley Cup Championship of the St. Louis. It just keeps producing the best feel good stories.

Meet Gloria: Endangered Wolf Center names rare wolf pup in honor of Blues' victory

IMAGE(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/9/c0/9c097d7c-3c17-5be4-9536-7abf78497e05/5d07cda69ad75.image.jpg?resize=1700%2C1133)

The little endangered American red wolf is rare, about nine weeks old, and worthy of celebration. So they named her Gloria.

Gloria is one of a litter of seven pups born on at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka on April 23.

A longtime volunteer suggested they name one of the pups Gloria in honor of the St. Louis Blues’ Stanley Cup victory. The workers and volunteers at the center figure Gloria represents victory herself, not just of the hockey kind, but of the wolf kind as well. American red wolves are the most endangered wolf in the world, and the litter is rare.

For more than 40 years, the center has worked to preserve wolves and introduce them to the wild.

“Just like the Blues, this is a momentous achievement,” said Regina Mossotti, the center's director of animal care and conservation, said in a statement. “There are fewer than 30 American red wolves left in the wild and only about 200 housed at captive breeding programs. To date, 45 of those remaining wolves have been born at EWC.”

Vladimir Tarasenko made a young Blues fan’s day during the parade and it’s the best thing ever

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/DMHKxFE.png)

Video at the link. It was taken by Michelle Smallmon, who cohosts the local morning sports show 101 Sports. Of all the media at the parade taking video and doing interviews, here stuff was by far the best, because she was just shooting video of the players interacting with fans and each other instead of asking them for the 347th time, "What does it feel like to be a champion?'

At one point during the parade folks started to get antsy and thought it was over. But what was going on was players getting out and spending loads of time with the fans, and it held up the whole parade. The route was about 13 blocks, and it took them three hours to get them to the end.

It didn't help that many of the players were absolutely wasted. But, seriously, I've been to championship parades for the Jayhawks, Royals, and Cardinals. None of them were even close to the emotion being shared by everyone on Saturday. It was amazing.

Jayhawker wrote:

Still posting stories that have come out of the awesome Stanley Cup Championship of the St. Louis. It just keeps producing the best feel good stories.

Meet Gloria: Endangered Wolf Center names rare wolf pup in honor of Blues' victory

IMAGE(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/9/c0/9c097d7c-3c17-5be4-9536-7abf78497e05/5d07cda69ad75.image.jpg?resize=1700%2C1133)

Cool place to go if you get the chance. Went a few times in Scouts as a kid.

Jayhawker wrote:

Still posting stories that have come out of the awesome Stanley Cup Championship of the St. Louis. It just keeps producing the best feel good stories.

Meet Gloria: Endangered Wolf Center names rare wolf pup in honor of Blues' victory

IMAGE(https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/9/c0/9c097d7c-3c17-5be4-9536-7abf78497e05/5d07cda69ad75.image.jpg?resize=1700%2C1133)

The little endangered American red wolf is rare, about nine weeks old, and worthy of celebration. So they named her Gloria.

Gloria is one of a litter of seven pups born on at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka on April 23.

A longtime volunteer suggested they name one of the pups Gloria in honor of the St. Louis Blues’ Stanley Cup victory. The workers and volunteers at the center figure Gloria represents victory herself, not just of the hockey kind, but of the wolf kind as well. American red wolves are the most endangered wolf in the world, and the litter is rare.

For more than 40 years, the center has worked to preserve wolves and introduce them to the wild.

“Just like the Blues, this is a momentous achievement,” said Regina Mossotti, the center's director of animal care and conservation, said in a statement. “There are fewer than 30 American red wolves left in the wild and only about 200 housed at captive breeding programs. To date, 45 of those remaining wolves have been born at EWC.”

Vladimir Tarasenko made a young Blues fan’s day during the parade and it’s the best thing ever

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/DMHKxFE.png)

Video at the link. It was taken by Michelle Smallmon, who cohosts the local morning sports show 101 Sports. Of all the media at the parade taking video and doing interviews, here stuff was by far the best, because she was just shooting video of the players interacting with fans and each other instead of asking them for the 347th time, "What does it feel like to be a champion?'

At one point during the parade folks started to get antsy and thought it was over. But what was going on was players getting out and spending loads of time with the fans, and it held up the whole parade. The route was about 13 blocks, and it took them three hours to get them to the end.

It didn't help that many of the players were absolutely wasted. But, seriously, I've been to championship parades for the Jayhawks, Royals, and Cardinals. None of them were even close to the emotion being shared by everyone on Saturday. It was amazing.

I had several friends down there with their families and said the parade was "life changing" and a transformative experience. Sounds like a good party.

What was the problem with Stonehenge?

Grenn wrote:

What was the problem with Stonehenge?

It had nothing to do with the metric system, but when they drew up their idea for a Stonehenge to be made and lowered during the concert they used double in stress of single apostrophes. So, instead of 10 feet tall, it was 10 inches tall.

Of course, with metric, they would have used “m,” so it less likely to get converted to “cm.”

This is still my favorite fact about metrics
How pirates of the caribbean hijacked America's metric system