It Is Something. Maybe.

The iconic moment from the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when Rick Astley Rick Rolled everyone on the Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends float

Superman is a symbol of hope for people to do better, Batman is the hope for things to be better. Discuss

Yeah, pretty much.  I think heroism in general orbits around the central idea of I believe that the world can choose to be better, and how it shows in different characters depends on where the focus lies.

For Superman that comes out as people can be good and for Batman it comes out as things can be fair.

In a lot of cases, Superman models ideal behavior.  Being nigh-indestructible lets him function as basically the ultimate antidote to the bystander effect; a person who looks human (face unmasked) but can safely lead the way into adversity to help others.  It’s the idea that people are fundamentally good and just need a reminder/ someone to show them how.  He’s also the fantasy that someone with massive power would use that power to unconditionally do good.

Batman meanwhile, prioritises accountability.  He’s the manifestation of a guilty conscience, the shadow in the night that comes for people who do bad things for selfish reasons. But he’s also fair - there’s a reason why some of his most iconic conflicts (outside of his rogues) have been him taking down mob bosses, businessmen, bankers and politicians (rather than, say, beating up poor people for shoplifting).  A well-characterised Batman is one who saves the shoplifter from the corrupt mayor.  It’s the idea that, for people to be good, there needs to be a fair system - one that won’t punish goodness or reward exploitation.   (It’s not the reason why he wears a mask but I think there’s some good symbolism in the idea that, from the public’s perspective, the Batman could be nearly anyone.)  He’s also the fantasy that, even when the privileged/ powerful/ corrupt abuse their power, justice will still come for them and their victims.

And something that’s really unusual is that this kind of flips in their civilian identities.  Public figure Bruce Wayne is the mythical ethical millionaire/ billionaire; someone who uses his significant power and influence to unconditionally help Gotham and it’s people to be better.  Meanwhile Clark Kent, mister nobody-special-from-Kansas, is often an investigative journalist; the little guy who helps expose the big guys who misuse their power.

This is part of why they’re such good character foils for each other.  Batman may see Superman as somewhat naive and Superman may see Batman as being something of a paranoid downer, but at their cores they respect each because they share a similar central ideology and at times even methodology (just at different ends of the Sliding Scale of Superheroic Idealism Versus Cynicism).

The world can choose to be better, it just needs help.  Superman is a symbol of hope for people to be better.  Batman is the hope for things to be fair.

teaching paddling courses to kids is so much fun because without fail every class will have one or two children who are terrified to the point of tears about getting into the canoe, and every time I ask them what they’re most afraid of. I ask genuinely, “what do you think is the worst thing that could possibly happen to you today? If something horrible happens to you today, what will that thing be?”

And it’s always that the boat will capsize, that they’ll fall in, etc.

In summer courses, the answer is easy. I just walk into the water wearing my life jacket, start floating, and say “this is what it looks like when your boat capsizes and you fall in. I’m doing it right now. I fell in.”

If it’s chilly out and I don’t want to spend all day wet, I tell them, “want to know something funny? We’re going to capsize on purpose later. We have to learn how to capsize so that we know how to help ourselves when it happens on accident. Do you think we’d so something on purpose that’s dangerous? What will happen is that we will all fall in the water, and our life jackets will hold us up. I know that, because it’s my job to check your life jacket. Then we’ll all float around until we get back in our boats, and then we’ll go inside and change. The worst part of it all is that you’ll be soggy.”

This has never failed me. They always calm down, get in the boat, and end up having fun the entire time. Time and time again, the Unknown is the ultimate fear, and a little bit of patience at the start is all it takes to keep things running smoothly.

All that said, my favorite kids are the funny ones who clearly respond well to humor, so I get to tell them, “I can absolute guarantee that no one is going to drown today. I would never let that happen, because I don’t want to have to fill out the paperwork.”

me: what’s gonna happen?

crying child: I’ll fall in the lake

me: *falls into the lake on purpose* like this?

crying child: 

:’ 0

>: O !!!!!!!

dont forget to keep your mutuals active and healthy by taking them for daily w-a-l-k-s

me every time i spend over $50 on something, no matter how worthy of my money it is: oh god. what have i done. what have i just done. what have i

Library at Marienburg Castle, Germany

I got commissioned by my number one fan, my 5 year old, she wanted me to draw bees and of course I complied.

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Have A Nice Day!

rb to 今日はｈａｖｅ　ａ　ｎｉｃｅ　ｄａｙ

This post radiates positive energy

HAVE A NICE DAY

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Gotta reblog again

Go have a nice day everyone ☀️

World Heritage Post

The baby so far 🐉 still got a few bits to add but Im quite happy with it so far

kookaburra refusing to budge

Kookaburra sits IN THE GODDAMN WAY

on the moving window he will play

Leave, Kookaburra leave, Kookaburra causing a delay

@todaysbird

— Jonathan Marks - Anthropology and the Bell Curve (via leofarto)

I was reading an interesting article years ago about collective memory. There have been a lot of thinkpieces over the years about how humans are getting lazier and worse at remembering things thanks to technology. There’s a tendency, particularly in the western world, to behave as if memorization was all people did prior to the internet. 

But outside of artificial school test-taking environments, human beings have always relied on the collective memory of their close peers to keep track of information. Anyone who’s ever worked clothing retail knows that no single employee has the location of every item in the store memorized, but as long as you have enough people working the floor, nobody will ever have to waste time searching for an item because at least one employee is bound to remember which rack it’s on.

TL&DR - brains were never designed to function in isolation. 

Testing the intelligence of an individual in an isolation is never going to give you an accurate idea of a person’s true intellectual potential.

TL&DR TL&DR

Two (or more) heads is better than one.

My maternal grandfather was a math professor at the City University of New York. He died before I was born, but he passed a key bit of wisdom to my mother, and she passed it on to me:

The important thing is not knowing the answer, it’s knowing how to find the answer.

It our era of text and alphabets, that’s often knowing how to look something up. But for most of human existence, there were no alphabets. So knowing how to find the answer meant finding the person who knew the answer.

All human knowledge is cooperative.

Source

Every day I discover forms of art I could not have concieved of before, and I am in awe of being alive.

“Mothership” 🖖🖖

you ever hear a birdcall that sends you into uncontrollable fits of laughter

@todaysbird